Tweeters -

My apologies for this being belated, but Thanksgiving festivities kept me
away from the computer, yesterday!

Yesterday morning, between 10-1130am, Blake Hough and I watched a loon from
the Water Street site in Edmonds that looked suspiciously like an Arctic
Loon. The most noticeable characteristic was the broad white flanks - this
immediately grabbed my attention when I first saw the bird, and I had a
flashback of the Brownsmead, OR, Arctic Loon from January of last year. As
I remember (and after looking back through some pictures of that bird), the
extent of the white on the bird we saw yesterday matched that of the
Brownsmead bird (unfortunately, I didn't have my camera yesterday). Next,
we looked for a chinstrap - none. This loon had a clean white throat with
no black necklace.

When we first spotted the bird it was at rest, and then began preening.
Seeing this, I figured the white flanks I had seen were nothing to get
excited about - just the bird rolling on its side slightly as it rearranged
feathers. I decided it was worth keeping an eye on, though, and soon enough
it began feeding - actively hunting and diving. This made it difficult to
stay with the bird, but we were able to relocate it several times - and
noticed, each time, that the white flanks were still clearly visible (both
sides).

It was about this time when a large raft of about 20 Pacific Loons swam by,
closer in to shore. This gave us the opportunity to really compare this
bird with not just one, but many Pacifics. Firstly, not a single bird in
the raft showed more than a hint of white on the flanks - most had none.
Secondly, every bird had a noticeable black necklace. Lastly, the Pacifics
appeared darker overall than the loon with the white flanks. Otherwise, the
Pacifics and our lonely unidentified loon were nearly identical. We
eventually lost the possible Arctic at around 1130 as it continued actively
feeding farther from shore, getting into more choppy water.

We were watching the bird from the end of Water Street where there is a 2-hr
parking sign. We first noticed it at about 100-150 yards just south of
west, and continued to watch it within this range until it started drifting
further away from shore and was eventually lost.

I'm hesitant to definitively say that YES, it was an Arctic Loon simply
because this seems to be a recurring event through the years - I seem to
remember several reports of Arctic Loons from the Edmonds area over the last
decade, most of which turned out to be aberrant Pacifics. BUT, this bird
stood out noticeably with the few plumage characteristics we have to go on,
reminded me *very much* of the Brownsmead Arctic Loon, and is therefore very
much worth checking out.

Cheers and good birding!

Tyler Davis

--
Tyler Davis
FishingOwl at gmail.com
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