Hi Tweeters,

Bill and I just returned from birding at Ocean Shores yesterday.
Our target birds were the Rock Sandpiper and King Eider, and I think we saw
both of them. When we arrived at the Point Brown Jetty about 9 am the tide
was still going out. We ran into Matt Bartels scoping the jetty and he had
already located some rock-loving sandpipers way at the end of the jetty.
>From the shore we could plainly see Black Turnstones and other paler birds.
Matt pointed out that the Rock Sandpiper should be a bit smaller than the
turnstones and the Surfbirds a bit larger. We finally decided to climb out
onto the jetty a ways to see if we could get closer. Some ways out, we
could discern the turnstones standing next to a smaller sandpiper with a
longer, pointier bill. We're guessing that was the Rock Sandpiper, but we
were not close enough to get any photos. We also noted a few Brown Pelicans
and one skein of Pintails flying off the end of the jetty.

Next we moved to the parking lot next to the sewage treatment
plant. At that point Bill noticed a small bird fly up to the STP fence. We
were surprised to see a male Mountain Bluebird. It didn't stick around long
and flew off to the north. Moving on next to the bay behind the sewage
treatment plant, we looked for about an hour before the King Eider female
flew in with a small group of Surf Scoters. There were many other ducks,
grebes, mergansers, and a few Common Loons in the bay to amuse us while we
looked for the eider.

Although the weather had been sunny and fairly warm when we
arrived, it had now turned cloudy and the wind had picked up. We decided to
try for less wind and went out to Bill's Spit. The tide was all the way out
at this point, but we still saw a few Brant and a large number of shore
birds, quite distant from us, but Black-bellied Plover for sure and most
likely Dunlin. We finished off our ocean birding by driving out to the
beach on Damon Road. The beach was crawling with people in cars, on
horseback, flying kites, running dogs, etc. The wind was blowing the sand
in a moving carpet down the beach. Nonetheless, we saw shorebirds as soon
as we got close to the ocean, a group of 6 Marbled Godwit and a sizeable
flock of Sanderlings. At this point it started raining and we packed it in
for the day.



Happy birding, Charlotte Byers, Seattle