Hi, Tweeters,

After drooling over everyone else's exciting reports of
shorebirds at Bottle Beach, Bill and I decided to do a two-day blitz of
Grays Harbor, Ocean Shores, Westport and down to Tokeland. We started
Thursday, May 21, and our first stop was the Sandpiper Trail at Bowerman
Basin NWR. It was a stunningly beautiful morning and we saw almost 30
species of birds along the boardwalk, but not a single shorebird-and we were
there on an incoming tide. Not to worry, our best bird was a sighting of
two or three Purple Martins, competing with many Starlings for nesting
space. We moved back to the settling ponds at the end of Paulson Road.
Here the main excitement, as already reported by Brien Meilleur a week ago,
was the many Red-necked Phalaropes sailing around. I'd say there were still
at least 200 on the pond.

We continued on to the ocean and from here on we had to contend
with a fairly stiff northerly wind. At the Sewage Treatment Plant at Ocean
Shores we found one Whimbrel and a dozen Short-billed Dowitchers in breeding
plumage plus various ducks. On the beach that afternoon and the next
morning were many beautiful breeding plumage Sanderlings, as well as
Dunlins, and one Semi-palmated Plover. There were also flocks of
Bonaparte's Gulls mixed with Common Terns, resting on sandbars as the tide
came in on Friday morning.

It had been a year and a half since we'd been to the Ocean
Shores area and we were astonished at the changes to Damon Point. The land
nearest the shore seems to have shifted about 100 feet inland in front of
the Snow King Motel. I'm guessing that the lake on the point that used to
be attractive to birds like Buff-breasted Sandpipers is not longer there.
This change apparently occurred during the wind storm in the fall of 2007.

At the incoming tide of Friday, May 22, we were at Bottle Beach
and watched a brilliant assemblage of shorebirds feed and position
themselves in lines along the surf's edge. There were at least 200 Red
Knots, many Short-billed Dowitchers, Dunlins, Black-bellied Plovers, many in
breeding plumage, and two Western Sandpipers. This was a real feast for
birders' eyes. Our main surprise at Bottle Beach was to find that the land
between the beach and the road is now a developed state park, complete with
small parking lot, toilet, boardwalk out to the beach suitable for
wheelchairs, an observation area at the end of the trail. There is a nice
bridge over a small waterway there which already has a beaver dam under it.
We talked to a state parks man at Bottle Beach who told us that they had
planted many hundreds of native plants. This has all been accomplished in
the last 3-4 months according to our informant.

We continued on to Westport, where we found two Surfbirds in the rocks by
the observation tower. There were a few Pigeon Guillemots flying about as
well.

Onward to Midway Beach. We stopped to have our lunch at the end
of the road. While eating, an avid bird photographer pulled up, jumped out
and was soon on his belly taking pictures of something right on the road
(behind the gate) at the edge of a sizeable lake that now lies across the
road. When we finished our lunch we cautiously advanced so as not to
disturb his shoot. It had been a year and a half since we'd been at Midway
Beach too and we'd never seen so much water back of the main beach dunes
before. We did notice the 3 Tundra Swans that Eric Huston saw on Thursday,
May 21. Then the photographer stood up and we figured we could approach the
lake to see what he was looking at. We could see phalaropes swimming around
practically at his feet. As he turned toward us, he saw them too and
dropped back down to take more pictures. We then scoped the area where he
was lying a saw a breeding plumage female Red Phalarope about 5 feet in
front of the photographer. I'll bet he got some great shots. We were
pretty excited about this bird-a lifter for Bill and only the second time
I'd seen one in about 20 years. However, the bird vanished and so we headed
south. It wasn't until we got home last night and read Eric Huston's report
in Tweeters that we realized we had serendipitously stumbled across the
bird-du-jour.

We stopped where the gulls tend to congregate at Cape
Shoalwater. Among the gulls was an immature Glaucous Gull. I don't think
there are any other gulls that we find in Washington that have pink bills
with black tips, are there?

Our final stop of note was Tokeland. Here we found one Willet
and lots of distant Marbled Godwits. Our final shorebird count was 15.
What a great trip! Now Bill gets to sort through the 400 plus pictures he
took to find the 10 or 20 that were really good.



Happy birding, Charlotte Byers, Seattle