On Sept. 26, I spent a day birding Ocean Shores to Tokeland before our last scheduled pelagic trip on the 27th. Hoping to catch up with shorebird sightings this past week, I was only able to see one Bar-tailed Godwit at Tokeland. The rest of the shorebird sightings were of common expected species. The highlight of the day was a winter plumaged, adult Elegant Tern off 7th St. looking out at the sand bars in Tokeland. This was a single bird at the end of a sandy spit. On the spit were Western Gulls, Glaucous-winged Gulls, Heermann's Gulls and a few Caspian Terns. This tern had a complete white forhead with black feathering on the sides of the head, including the eye, coming to the back of the head like a punk hairdo. The bill was quite long and slender and reddish orange in color. Gray mantle and white neck, breast and belly. Light black primaries. As the bird flew, after being harassed by two adult and one juvenile Caspian Terns, I could see there was very little black in the underwing tips, whereas Caspians have much more of a black wedge in their wingtips. The bird was obviously smaller than the Western Gulls and the few Caspian Terns nearby. Having lived in California for over 18 years and having seen Elegant Terns several times in Washington state, I am very confindant of this sighting.

Todays pelagic trip out of Westport and our last of the year was highlighted by one Laysan Albatross, one Manx Shearwater, four sightings of Flesh-footed Shearwater, good numbers of Buller's Shearwaters, four South Polar Skuas and my personal highlight of a Golden-crowned Kinglet about 20 miles out. This was my 100 pelagic bird in Washington waters seen at least 2 miles from shore. The mammal highlight had to be, I forget the correct number, of Risso's Dolphins with some putting on a show of breaching out of the water!
For complete totals of all our trips this year and other pelagic information please check our website at www.westportseabirds.com

Bruce LaBar
Tacoma, WA
blabar at harbornet.com