Tweets -



An addendum to my July 25th Westport Seabirds trip report. I forget to note that we had reasonably good looks at three Short-tailed Shearwaters on the water near the boat around the shrimp trawlers that we found on our return trip to Westport. This was actually the least expected species for the day given the late July date, even though both the June 23rd and July 14th Westport trips each noted a single Short-tailed Shearwater. These summer sightings are quite unexpected as this species is seen mostly from October through April off Westport. At this time of year, they are abundant in the Bering Sea and then move south in the fall along the Pacific coast to as far south as central California. Breeding birds return to islands off of south Australia to breed during our winter. They are always an identification challenge, especially on the wing, as they closely resemble Sooty Shearwaters, and we saw about 1000 Sooties on Wednesday. Fortunately, Short-tails do appear to be somewhat more likely than Sooties to land and stay on the water near the boat around chum and this allowed close study of the birds we saw on Wednesday as we hung around by the trawlers.



Happy Birding!



Gene Revelas

Olympia, WA

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