We did some birding around the harbor in Westport on Friday, September 9th.
One of the highlights is the wintering Marbled Godwit flock. The last
estimate I saw was of about 600 birds. It was high tide and the Godwits
were resting across from the last float on the embankment near the Coast
Guard Station. It seems to me that the flock has grown well beyond the
previous estimate. Does anybody have a more recent figure?
The sea lions on the floats are extremely noisy. Most of them are large
bulls. We watched several of them feeding on salmon outside the harbor.
They were thrashing their catch around with a gull flock hoping for
leftovers.
We drove all the way to the end st the roundabout and viewing platform and
walked the floats and bridge to the outer fishing pier. First bird in the
harbor was a single first-of-the-year male Surf Scoter. Next was a single
Common Murre and 41 Black Turnstones along the outer wall and rocks of the
harbor. Of course there also were large numbers of Brown Pelicans ( mainly
juveniles), gulls and cormorants - mainly Pelagic. A last look .from the
viewing platform added two Wandering Tattlers to our list

Good Birding!

Hans
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*Hans Feddern*
Twin Lakes/Federal Way, WA
thefedderns at gmail.com