Hello Tweets,
The winds over the last couple days didn't seem particularly conducive for
blowing pelagic birds into central Puget Sound, but historic storms do
weird things and reports of tubnoses at the north end of Admiralty Inlet
had my interest piqued so I did a seawatch from the Edmonds Pier this
morning.

Bird movement was overall fairly average in the main channel, but there
were extremely large numbers of gulls between Pt. No Point and the south
end of Whidbey Island. This area typically sees large groups of gulls, but
this might have been the highest number of active birds I can recall
seeing. I spent most of my time scanning these flocks hoping I'd be able to
pick something unusual out.

The most interesting bird of the day was a probable Brown Booby. For about
five minutes I watched a large dark bird that spent most of its time
gliding out with the gulls. The wings seemed long and thin (not broad like
a Pelican) and my initial gut reaction was an Albatross, but I eventually
felt I could rule that out based on behavior. Several times I had a view of
the underside which appeared to be light on the belly extending out to the
inner wings. At one point it appeared to plunge-dive. Alas, I lost it and
never saw it again after that.

Later while trying to relocate the bird above I had a brief view of what
was likely a Northern Fulmar, but the vast distance made definitive ID
difficult.

Josh Adams
Cathcart, WA
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