Tweets,

Eight incoming members of Seattle Audubon Society's Master Birder class joined Jeanelle Richardson and me for a day of birding and learning on the Kitsap Peninsula on Saturday. The day was warm and sunny, but we had to work hard to find any birds, let alone our targets for the day: shorebirds and seabirds.

The highlights of our trip included a Barred Owl sitting on a utility line near Foulweather Bluff; an Orange-crowned Warbler glimpsed in foliage above the beach at TNC's Foulweather Bluff Reserve (the most productive site of the day); a Hutton's Vireo calling in the trees at the entrance to the reserve; Red-necked and Horned Grebes in various stages of molt off the reserve's beach; Common Murres and Pigeon Guillemots in similarly confusing molt patterns seen at Point No Point, Port Gamble and Fort Flagler; Caspian and Common Terns alongside a Bonaparte's Gull in winter plumage at Port Gamble; and male and female Harlequin Ducks seen at Fort Flagler.

Because of a mid-day high tide, shorebirds were elusive, but we were able to find Black-bellied Plovers and Western Sandpipers at Hansville, Sanderlings at Fort Flagler, and Least Sandpipers and possibly a Lesser Yellowlegs seen at long distance at the Edmonds Marsh on our way home. We identified a total of 58 species for the day, and this year's crop of new Master Birders appears to be up to the challenge of finding and identifying elusive, molting and migrating birds of the Pacific Northwest.

Jim Owens
Mercer Island