Bill Tweit and I ventured to Ocean Shores to try for the Smith's Longspur this morning. We spent several hours from 6:15 to 8:15 without success and were heading out to go check some other areas. As we returned to the car, we received a call from Chuck Jensen who had found and photographed the bird.
We returned to the area about 15 minutes later and not long after we started looking again, we observed it flying over, calling - flying towards the other end of the pond and out of sight. We looked around for a while and had no success finding it again - several cells of rain and wind began moving through. We ended up birding a few other spots - mainly spending time at the Jetty before heading back to the game range around 2:00 PM.
We met Brad Waggoner and George Gerdts near the STP and walked out to the game range. Cara Borre was there - waving us over - she had the bird. We obseved it on the ground for about 15-20 minutes before heading out to check Bottle Beach.
Here are the eBird checklists with other birds and notes:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S15036273
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S15036061
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S15036081
Here's a link to some photos of the Longspur
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross/
Cheers,
Ryan Shaw
Tacoma
rtshaw80 at hotmail.com