[Tweeters] Snow Geese and other birds at Point No Point

[Dennis Paulson]

Netta Smith and I spent two hours at Point No Point this morning. Beautiful weather, with small numbers of birds flying past offshore, not many near enough for good photos.

Water birds we saw included Snow Goose (which I had never seen in the county, two immatures that flew in to the beach and hung around, amazingly tame and feeding on beached eelgrass), Red-breasted Merganser (30), Pacific Loon (10*), Common Loon (1), Double-crested Cormorant (20*), Brandt’s Cormorant (8*), Pelagic Cormorant (10*), Horned Grebe (1), Heermann’s Gull (4), Bonaparte’s Gull (10*), Short-billed Gull (5*), Glaucous-winged Gull (40*), and Rhinoceros Auklet (1). Most of the individuals of the asterisked species were heading south into Puget Sound, although most of the mergansers were, oddly, flying north.

Just a wild estimate that we saw no more than a tenth as many birds as we would have seen 30 years ago under similar conditions.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle