My wife and I went to Grays Harbor on Monday. I had the tide charts and being a total novice I thought we needed to arrive a little bit before high tide. Fortunately, I tend to arrive way to early for most events, so we arrived at the NWR more than two hours before high tide. We got there just in time for a great shore bird show. Most of the us left almost two hours before the high tide on my tide charts as the show was over. On my way out I encountered a number of sophisticated birders (people with big scopes) coming in. I think they missed the show.

The same thing happened to us the next day at Bottle Beach. We arrived about 2 1/2 hours before the high tide and again arrived just in time for the show. The birds were all gone by two hours before high tide. I heard someone say that the tides were unusually high. And when we came back to Bottle Beach the next morning for a quiet walk, we could see that the tide rose more than two feet higher than the point where the water covered the mud flats and the shore birds left.

I do not qualify as a serious birder, but I thought this information might be useful if my observations are correct. It appears that the timing for viewing shore birds depends not only on high tides but also on how high the tide will be.