Subject: [Tweeters] Neah Bay: Shearwaters
Date: Oct 19 22:05:20 2014
From: Nigel Ball - nigelj.ball at gmail.com


Hi
Well, we hit Cape Flattery when there were strong winds from the Pacific (
I lost my Islay cap <insert frowny face thingy here>.

But on the positive side, there were several hundred SOOTY/ SORT-TAILED
SHEARWATERS of which I was confident that three were Sooty and perhaps one
was Short-tailed (an identification rate of under 1%...), nine +
PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATERS (with varying degrees of duskiness to underwing, a
feature that I had not thought about before) and 1 possible MANX - looked
great for that species (blackish above, clearly smaller than sooty,
reasonably gleaming white below, and very shearwatery flight with
occasional more rapid wing beats. But distant and late in the year...

Many hundreds HEERMAN'S GULLS of which none had white wing patches. Back in
the day, large gulls and especially darker ones such as Heerman's had about
a 0.5% incidence of white patches. It occurred to me that it is many years
since I've seen such a bird. Do they still exist, or am I less observant?

A very obliging PALM WARBLER just outside the restaurant and yet another
PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATER (but no Sooties) from the Gray Whale (3) observation
place just east of the Nation boundary.

Cheers,
Nigel
--
Nigel Ball
nigelj.ball at gmail.com
206 715 8030
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