Good evening Tweeters,

There were both lots of good birds and good birders on the coast today. I met up with Barb McDowell in Aberdeen (there was snow on the hills in Capital Forest visible from Hwy 8 on my drive out there!) and we headed down to Tokeland and birded our way to Westport. We had some showers in the morning, but the the sky cleared up and the wind was very calm by the early afternoon. Here's the highlights:

Tokeland: We met up with Ruth Sullivan down there and spent part of the day birding with her as well. When we arrived at the marina, a fellow birder (Carl) was onto the HUDSONIAN GODWIT; it appeared to have an injured right leg. We were able to observe it from maybe 20' away for quite some time. There was also 1 MARBLED GODWIT nearby. It also had an injured leg. The HUGO eventually flew off to the jetty, but I talked to other birders later in the day who were able to spot it from the marina. We had no luck with the Tropical Kingbird.

Graveyard Spit: Mostly gulls. We did find 1 LONG-BILLED CURLEW, which is always a treat to see.

We drove down Hwy 501, scanning the mud flats in the hopes of finding more godwits. We did find a scattered flock of Marbled Godwits a few miles down the highway, but did not locate the Bar-tailed that we were hoping for. There were 5 or so WILLETS in the mix, though. We also scanned the marshes behind the Chevron station by the Shoalwater Reservation, but only turned up distant views of small peeps and Black-Bellied Plovers.

Grayland Beach SP: We ran into Carl for the third time that day. He had 9 SNOWY PLOVERS in view near the wrack line down from Trail 3. Each individual was hunkered down by their own clump of washed up eel grass and really blended in quite well. Barb and I hiked farther down the beach with fellow birder Andy and we found 15 more Snowies and the WILSON'S PLOVER in the same wrack zone, a little to the left of the Trail 5 entrance (but close to the water). While it was very nice getting a new state bird, I was more impressed by the number of Snowies; 24 was the most that I've seen here. I'm hoping that we'll see a rise in their numbers over the years thanks to the new critical areas that have been set aside for them.

We finished the day at Westport. We quickly found the COMMON EIDER fairly close to the water break wall that protects the marina. My 2nd state bird of the day and 350th for my life total (yay!). We also saw a large number of sea lions in the water and piled up on one of the docks. We scoped the hundreds of Marbled Godwits on the rocks near the Coast Guard Station. Most had their heads tucked out of sight and we couldn't pick out the hoped for Bar-tailed among them. A couple of the godwits were very light, but I believe that they were just pale Marbled Godwits. We also tried for the Lapland Longspur at Westhaven SP mentioned by Sherry Hagen, but had no luck.

It was nice to see so many familiar faces and to make new acquaintances today.

Good birding,

Lonnie Somer
Olympia
wheelermombi at comcast.net