At the beginning of April I moved back to Friday Harbor for another
season of working on a whale-watch boat, but the bird-watching has been
fantastic on and around San Juan Island as well. At South Beach you can
still find some long-tailed ducks and horned grebes (now in breeding
plumage), and one visit turned up some migrating sanderlings and
black-bellied plovers.

Out on the water, rhinoceros auklets are abundant, and there are also
lots of common loons, harlequin ducks, and black oystercatchers to be
seen. Bald eagles are everywhere, and I have had a couple sightings of
peregrine falcons. Tree, violet-green, and northern rough-winged
swallows have been spotted - no barn swallows just yet!

Today, while hiking the trails near the Friday Harbor Labs, it was a
three woodpecker day: pileated, hairy, and flickers. House wrens were
singing, and I also heard a few varied thrushes and my first
pacific-slope flycatchers of the season. Orange-crowned warblers,
chestnut-backed chickadees, brown creepers, red-breasted nuthatches, and
Bewick's wrens were everywhere.

Great stuff!

Monika Wieland
orcawatcher.blogspot.com