Tweeters,

Retirement does have its advantages!! Today's weather promised to be the
best of the week at the coast, so I took the weather folks at their word and
made the drive to Tokeland. As earlier reported by many observers, there
are about 1000+ Marbled Godwits and the lone adult Bar-tailed at the
marina. The main reason for this post is to inform anyone heading to Tokeland
to try for the bird that there will be a dredging operation going on at the
marina starting on October 5th. Several very large pipes are being
inserted into the marina between the "Godwit" dock and the adjacent beach. Even
today, while I was there for about an hour, the workers flushed the whole
flock of birds twice. It's hard to say how the birds will react once the
dredging operation actually gets going. Hopefully they will adapt and perhaps
find roosting on the jetty rocks to their liking for the dredging period.
The workers thought the dredging would last about two weeks, ugh!!

Also present at Tokeland were 21 Willets

At Midland Access Road:

2 juv Western Sandpipers
2 juv Pectoral Sandpipers
3 Semi-palmated Plovers
3 Black-bellied Plovers
60 Am Pipits
50+ Savannah Sparrows

George Gerdts
_geopandion at aol.com_ (mailto:geopandion at aol.com)
206-842-8138