Hey Tweets,

I want to send out a huge "thank you" to everyone who provided my father
and I with birding information and facilitated our 3-day birding adventure.

Saturday began with our Westport pelagic, which had a beautiful MANX
SHEARWATER (lifer for me) within the first 30 min. For me, this was extra
sweet because I had missed one seen by only a few people on the boat last
year in early October. Within another hour, my father had a lifer Buller's
Shearwater. Once we got to the shrimp boats, we had amazing looks at
multiple Flesh-footed Shearwaters (lifers for both of us)! My father has a
picture with 3 FLESH-FOOTED SHEARWATERS in frame at the same time!! We
also got amazing looks at Pomarine Jaegers, South Polar Skuas, Sabine's
Gulls, Black-footed Albatross, and much more!

After the Saturday trip, we just made it to Tacoma to scope out the spot
for the SLATY-BACKED GULL, but we had too little light to sort through the
gulls then. My father came back Sunday morning, scoped the area for
several hours, and finally got great looks at the gull. Trip lifer number
3 for my dad, and an 18-year nemesis bird!! A tremendous thanks to Bruce
Labar for instructions on where to look!

This morning, we got out the door early, hit Eide Road and Fir Island
looking for Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, and had no success. We then made a
beeline for Reifel, got there at 1230PM, and scoped the ponds, but could
only find Dowitchers. As our time ran short and we started back from the
observation tower, we looked in the Dowitcher group for one last time, saw
something that looked funny, got the scope on it, and BAM!! SHARP-TAILED
SANDPIPER, perfect light, 40 feet away, 5 min view, all angles, PERFECT!!
It was very skittish and bolted after 5 min, but we got our amazing looks,
and my dad got is 4th lifer of the trip, and, as he put it, one of his best
lifers of all time. He hasn't had a 4-lifer trip in about 10 years.....

We bolted straight back to Seattle, got through the border in 2 min, and
are now doing some "birdwatching" in a local bar, watching the Seahawks
kick the piss out of Washington. It's been a great day for birding!!!

Thanks again to everyone for the help finding all of my dad's target
species. He leaves for home tomorrow morning and is completely
satisfied......except for that one more bird.....HA!!

-Nathaniel Peters
Seattle, WA
ncpeters at uw.edu
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