Hi Tweeters,

I spent a better-than-expected weather day (yesterday, 11-27-10) exploring some
places on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. There are links to a couple
of pics and a video at the end of the post.

Started off the day at the Elwha River mouth, where I was hoping for unusual
gulls or alcids. Instead I got nice diversity of waterbirds, with all 3
Scoters, the 3 regular Loons, and at least 15 Long-tailed and 50 Harlequin
Ducks. The one outlier Gull I found was a Ring-billed.

Next was my best location of the day, Ediz Hook. Close to the base of this spit
on some floating logs was a nice group of roosting shorebirds that included
Black-bellied Plovers, Dunlin, Black Turnstone, Sanderling, and a single Ruddy
Turnstone. About halfway down the accessible part, where there was a single log
on the south side, I checked out the rocks on the north side and found a
cooperatively roosting lone Rock Sandpiper, this was my favorite highlight of
the day watching and photographing this beauty.

Further down where some food had been put down there was an incongruous mix of 2
species feeding together - House Sparrows and Sanderling! There were also at
least 11 Marbled Murrelets scattered on the water.

Next up were some Sequim-area locations, most exciting was sorting thru a huge
(300++) flighty flock of blackbirds at the corner of Schmuck and Washington
Harbor Rds. There were several birds that had me going for a Rusty Blackbird,
and I have photos of a bird that experts tell me is a particularly well-marked
1st year male Brewer's Blackbird. There were a couple of Brown-headed Cowbirds
in the flock, and there could easily be a real Rusty in there. Raptors keeping
the birds jumpy included a Peregrine Falcon, Red-tailed Hawk, and Northern
Harrier.

I was losing daylight at this point, and didn't turn up anything else too
exciting, but did enjoy seeing a pair of Black Oystercatchers on the way back
home at Indian Island State Park on Indian Island, and I ended up tallying 89
species for the day.

Rock Sandpiper pic: http://tinyurl.com/24su6ef
video of Fox Sparrow messily foraging using its endearing 2-step method (best
full-screen):
http://vimeo.com/17253527
1st year male Brewer's Blackbird with a lot of rusty markings pic:
http://tinyurl.com/2e6gz74

Good birding,
Evan Houston
Seattle, WA