[Tweeters] Edmonds Seawatch

[Steve Hampton]

A number of us did a seawatch at Pt Wilson, Port Townsend this afternoon.
We estimated about 40 Short-tailed and 10 Sooty Shearwaters, mostly
foraging in the area north of the point and west of Whidbey Island. Other
highlights included 4 phalaropes, likely Red, and a Cassin's Auklet.



On Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:23 PM Josh Adams <xjoshx at gmail.com> wrote:


> 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

> _______________________________________________

> Tweeters mailing list

> Tweeters at u.washington.edu

> http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters

>



-- 
Steve Hampton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20211026/779454ee/attachment.html>