Hi All,

Along with my brother Dan, I lead a WOS field trip yesterday to parts of
Jefferson County and Kitsap County. We manged to escape but a few measly
drops of rain by birding in areas of the Port Townsend "rain shadow"
until mid-afternoon. We finally made it to Point no Point and vicinity
in Kitsap County in the late afternoon. We tallied a very respectable
100 species for the day not including a Barn Owl by a few folks prior to
our meeting and not including an American Kestrel and Northern Shrike (a
couple of targets for some participants) by Dan back in Jefferson County
on his way home. Highlight birds included:

TUNDRA SWAN - one in with small flock of Trumpeter Swans in Beaver
Valley near Chimacum. Tundra Swans are a tough-find in Jefferson County
while an ever-increasing number of Trumpeter Swans winter in Beaver
Valley and Central Valley near Chimacum.

GOLDEN EAGLE - an adult migrating/circling over Striebel's Corner at the
intersection of 104 & 307 about 3 or 4 miles west of Kingston. Sadly
only three of us saw this Kitsap rarity as the group had split up
temporarily to shift some car locations.

RED KNOT - A big thank you to a coyote for this bird! We, a few of us
anyway, detected the Knot in flight with Black-bellied Plovers coming
off the spit of Fort Flagler as it headed toward another distant
roosting spot on Indian Island - too distant to be able to pick it out
amongst the mixed flock of shorebirds. We were almost about to move on
when the shorebirds began to fly back our direction due to a coyote
approaching them at the distant roosting site. This is an over-wintering
bird (not many winter records!) that was found about a month ago in this
area.

GLAUCOUS GULL - 2nd cycle at Point no Point. I'm pretty certain that
this likely is the same one as seen off of Edmonds a while back.

RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD - capitalized and highlighted, you say?? Well, it was
my first-of-spring and it was amongst a decent flock of birds at
Salsbury Point which included Hutton's Vireo, Brown Creeper, Bushtit,
and Townsend's Warbler.

We were unable to locate Yellow-billed Loon off of Point Wilson, the
Northern Mockingbird at Nordland (not seen for the last two weeks?), or
get a response from an over-wintering Sora or White-throated Sparrow
back on Bainbridge Island. Oh well. A few other goodies included a
Greater White-fronted Goose and a few Cackling Geese at Wing Point on
Bainbridge Island, and two Western Scrub-Jays (maybe up to 6 of them
resident in Hansville/Point no Point area now). A Cooper's Hawk and a
Wilson's Snipe at Point no Point were also pretty special for a few of
the participants.

Twas a fun day.

Cheers and good birding,
Brad Waggoner
Bainbridge Island
mailto:wagtail at sounddsl.com