Hi Tweets,

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of leading a Gray's Harbor Shorebird Festival field trip with Faye Hands and Diane Yorgason-Quinn onto Quinalt Tribal land at Point Grenville. But before we even got out to the point, the biggest change was, or more correctly wasn't, at the end of the road. The old World War II concrete structures were completely gone! The Quinalt Tribe is going to be the host for the intertribal canoe festival in 2013 and in the place of the old concrete buildings will be a new Long House. Additionally, there are plans for a campground which may increase public access. Presently, you must have a guide from the Quinalt Tribe to access this site.

And then there were the birds, with full migration in swing along the coast. There was a truly massive raft of over 700 PACIFIC LOONS when we arrived and we could see 5-10 Loons/minute heading north every time we looked out to count. We estimated 1200 Pacific Loons in total, for our 4 hour visit. There was an equally large raft of 500 WESTERN GREBES in the same area, just south of the southernmost grass covered sea stack.

Most noteworthy was 500 BROWN PELICANS! At one point there was a raft of at least 350 together near a sea stack just drifting and the rest of the bay was filled with flying and fishing pelicans. Checking through my last 10 years of records for this trip, my first sighting were of 8 individuals in 2005, a mix of adult and immature birds. At the time it was noteworthy to see any Brown Pelicans and this group also included a few adults.

Here's the breakdown on sightings by year for Brown Pelicans:

06: 8
07: 0
08: 4
09: 4
10: 40
11: 8
12: 500

Other birds of note:

Black Oystercatcher 4 - busily creating new oystercatchers
Surfbirds 7 -first time for this trip and no Black Turnstones that we usually find

Pigeon Guillemot 30
Common Murre 4 - a very low number
Marbled Murrelet 2 - a trip first
Notable miss was Tufted Puffin that has nested on the southernmost sea stack
All 3 Loons & all 3 Cormorants
Caspian Terns 50 - highest previous count was 14.

And 1 Sea Otter to round off a truly lovely day out on the coast.

Good Birding,

Marcus Roening
Tacoma WA
marcus.d.roening at GSK.com
C: 253-988-8313