Hi Tweeters,
Today Bill and I went to the south side of Gray's Harbor. We spent the hours before high tide at Bottle Beach watching the tide come in and some of the same shorebirds we've been watching for the past two days--Dunlin and Western Sandpiper--plus Short-billed Dowitcher, one or two Black-bellied Plover, one Whimbrel, and about 15 Red Knots. The Red Knots made a brief appearance about an hour before high tide and then vanished.
We moved on to Midway Beach where we donned NEOs to wade out into the largish lake to see what was there. At first the answer was not much. We'd heard both Virginia Rail and Sora and were trying to lure them into the open by playing their calls on our MP3. This didn't succeed, but then we noticed three Black-necked Stilts across from us--the first time we've seen this bird west of the Cascades.
Finally, at Tokeland we didn't see anything new for our trip, but there were hundreds of Marbled Godwits, many Short-billed Dowitchers and 5 Whimbrels. There was also a large group of Brant flying across the bay between us and Ledbetter Point to the south.
| forgot to mention on my two previous reports that there were many Black-throated Gray Warblers in Ocean Shores State Park (May 8 and 9).
Happy birding, Charlotte Byers, Seattle