Hi Tweeters,

Inspired by reports by Adam Sedgley and Bob Whitney last week, a
small group of us headed over to Port Townsend and Marrowstone Island
yesterday to see which birds reported then we could find. The weather was
clear, even sunny, but, especially along the water, cold! We went first to
Fort Worden and the stretch of beach west of the Point Wilson lighthouse.
>From there looking north, we're pretty sure we found the Yellow-billed Loon
that's been there for a while. It was a ways out, but big with a slightly
uptilted yellowish bill. Along with that fairly rare bird, we saw Harlequin
Ducks, many other loons flying by and many alcids flying by way out. I'm
pretty sure some of them were Ancient Murrelets. At Fort Worden and
elsewhere we saw lots of Pelagic Cormorants, Bufflehead, Red-breasted
Mergansers, and Surf Scoters.

After lunch we headed to Ft. Flagler to look at the picnic/beach
access area across from Port Townsend and then Marrowstone Point. Our best
sighting at the beach access was four Long-tailed Ducks. These were all
feeding out near a yellow buoy several hundred feet from shore and between
us and Port Townsend. The light was good and their white heads showed well
and at one point I got a good look at one of the long tails. There were
also Brant present across the way on Indian Island.

We missed the raft of 295 Marbled Murrelets and a number of
other species that Adam reported from last Sunday.

Other notable sightings were several hundred Pintail Ducks along
with Green-winged Teal feeding close to shore at the southern end of
Marrowstone Island. There were also two small flocks of Trumpeter Swans in
fields just south of Chimacum.

Happy birding, Charlotte Byers, Seattle