Subject: [Tweeters] Pacific/Grays Harbor County birding
Date: Oct 31 09:12:16 2014
From: Andrew Emlen - aemlen at centurytel.net


Hello,
Yesterday, Oct 30, Kyleen Austin and I birded from our home county of Wahkiakum through Pacific County up to Westport and back. The Red Phalarope in Skamokawa is gone; I think the small white bundle I saw being carried off by a raven the day before was the phalarope. We drove straight to 101, the first stop near milepost 50, Carruthers Slough, where there was a flock of 51 Snow Geese with three Brant, a Marbled Godwit, Dusky Canada Geese and hundreds of Cackling Geese. We pulled over again at milepost 52 for a flock of 28 Long-billed Dowitchers and a Bonaparte's Gull. We stopped at Jolly Rogers' in South Bend to look for the Black-headed Gull at 10:30, but did not see it or the Bonaparte's Gulls it has been traveling with (I saw on ebird that Ryan Abe found it yesterday at 1:30pm). There was a Rough-legged Hawk perched on the other side of the river. There was a Tropical Kingbird at Tokeland Marina hawking insects from the power lines. No shorebirds were present at the marina beyond three Black-bellied Plovers and a lone Willet. At Midway Beach we waded knee-deep across the flooded deflation plain, where there were three Red Phalaropes, out to the open beach directly beyond the end of the trail where there were 17 Snowy Plovers together, many of them color-banded. At Westport the weather turned very wet and rainy, cutting the visibility, so we saw little beyond about 80 Brown Pelicans. At Bottle Beach we passed the end of a beached log and surprised a Black Turnstone that flew up right in front of our faces. Another stop at Jolly Rogers' on the way home at dusk still turned up no Black-headed Gull, but large numbers of shorebirds had come in to roost, mostly Dunlin and Least Sandpipers with a few Semipalmated Plovers.

Highlights:
Snow Goose
Brant
Marbled Godwit
Long-billed Dowitcher
Rough-legged Hawk
TROPICAL KINGBIRD
Red Phalarope
17 Snowy Plover
Black Turnstone

-Andrew Emlen