Hello Tweets,
I spent a couple of hours this afternoon birding north from edmonds
looking for seabirds. I did the same circuit on a windy Sunday nine
days ago and came up with very low numbers. Today couldn't have been
more different. Nothing rare that I was able to positively ID, but the
distance involved made for some head scratching on a few of them. I
pointed my scope at Point No Point a few times, but even at 60x
couldn't cut through 10 miles at atmosphere to let me make out the
Franklin's Gull or Parasitic Jaeger reported earlier today ;)

Here are the highlights:

Edmonds Pier:
2 Horned Grebe (First of the season for me)
1 Pigeon Guillemot hanging out between the pier and the rocks in very
confusing stage of molt.
3 Marbled Murrelets a hundred yards off the pier
Highlight was seeing a school of Coho (Silver) Salmon porpoising as
they headed north. The salmon actually break the surface with their
heads and backs almost like a pod of dolphins.

Sunset Ave. (North of the Ferry dock)
7 Pigeon Guillemots sleeping way off shore. Various stages of molt and
the fact that they were sleeping kept me guessing for a while before
one finally stretched its wings and exposed fading wing patches.
Several more Marbled Murrelets.

Ocean Ave (Residential street north of Edmonds with 1-2 parking spots):
2 Horned Grebe
1 Western Grebe
2 Rhinoceros Auklets
1 Pigeon Guillemot that was already in winter plumage.
Huge group of birds that I couldn't ID to the north.

Stamm Overlook Park (Small overlook on Olympic view drive with a
couple parking spots. Distance makes IDing anything that's not obvious
pretty difficult):
200+ Western Grebes. This was the group of birds I couldn't ID from
Ocean Ave. It continued north beyond where I could see.

Haines Wharf Park:
200+ Gulls roosting on the roof of the Wharf building along with one
very out of place Great Blue Heron. Appeared to contain only GW,
California, and Ring-Billed.
200+ more Western Grebe. The continuation of the group I'd seen 1.5
miles south.
A small pod of Harbor Porpoises surfacing near the Grebes.


Josh Adams
Lynnwood, WA