Hi Tweets,

We had a great trip for the shorebird festival out to Point Grenville today on the Quinalt Indian Reservation. The weather was the usual coast spring smorgasbord with steady 25-30 knot winds and sun breaks. Thankfully, the rain held off until the field trip,was on the bus and returning back to Hoqiam.

Highlights were 3 Tufted Puffins see near the southernmost stack. Our average for finding the puffins is about 1 out of 3. Common Murres, Rhinocerous Auklet and Pigeon Guillemots rounded out the alcid family.

A nice treat was our largest number of rock pipers we've ever had on this trip, with a group of 30 SURFBIRDS AND 25 BLACK TURNSTONES. And a couple of Black Oystercatchers were enjoyed by all.

Continuing the trend of moving further north were Brown Pelicans. First seen a few years ago, we now see them each year.

No huge flocks of migrants seen this year from the point, other than 90 Caspian Terns on the river sand just south of the point.

This is tribal land and does require a tribal guide. Call tribal headquarters to make arrangements. There have been some rather drastic changes to the Point, since they held the Canoe Rendezvous this past summer with over 1000 people. All the old WW II structures are long gone. Now you will find gigantic graveled parking areas and roads around the point, plus fencing around the whole point to keep folks safe from the crumbling cliff faces.

Thanks to Faye Hands and Diane Yorgason-Quinn for being such great co-leaders and to the volunteers that put on such a great festival.

OCEAN CITY BEACH: Behind the Quinalt Casino this evening was a truly impressive number of shorebirds feeding madly on the beach. We counted at least 1200 Marbled Godwits in this one tiny section of beach pushing their beaks down into the sand up to their foreheads. Mix in a few hundred each of Sanderlings, Western Sandpipers and Dunlins and it was quite the show. Made even more interesting by winds from the south of a steady 25-30 mph made it tough to stand in place and impossible to take a hand off the scope lest it go flying.

After that we decided on a round of golf - or at least a tour of the course and had a nice mix of small numbers of marbled Godwit, Short-billed Dowtichers, Dunlin, SemiP plover and Black-bellied Plover all in their spring finery.

Good Birding,

Sent from my iPad

Marcus Roening,
Tacoma. WA
C: 253-988-8313
Marcus.d.roening at gsk.com