May Day Shorebirding at Theler

I made it out of school on Friday excited to pick up JC Vicente and meet up with Terry Sisson to start May off properly.  Excitement doesn't get you anywhere in heavy traffic, however!  I got to JC a half an hour late, and that half hour turned into 40 minutes or more before I finally rolled into the Theler lot with JC.  Terry joined us soon thereafter, and we began our walk. 

Theler Wetlands

Calm skies and good tides at Theler

It was an interesting crew.  Terry, like me, has been to all corners of the state to find 100 species in every county, and has recorded more species in Mason County (224) than anyone!  His record of 179 species in a year in Mason was made back in 2003, at a time when I thought that starlings were baby crows.  JC is a 19 year-old Pierce County birder who is only a few years into birding, but has ears and enthusiasm to match nearly anyone.

(Note - my year list prior to this day was at 119.5, the annoying half-counted bird being Mountain Quail, which I had quite likely heard with an undiagnostic "cluck".  The half point will remain until the bird is fully counted.   Hang in there.)

It didn't take long for us to come across my first new species since the trip in late March - a Pacific-slope Flycatcher (120.5) calling from the boardwalk.  Pacific wrens joined them, but in late afternoon, we weren't expecting too much from the passerines.  As we walked, Terry caught me up on birds he had scouted out before meeting up with me.  I'll admit now that three of them are ones that I still don't have on the year list - Western Wood Pewee, Northern Shoveler and Ruddy Duck, the latter two coming from Belfair State Park. 

We discussed the state of the former rail marsh, which was now salt marsh, when swallows started rolling in.  Barn Swallows (121.5) were among them, and some Cliff Swallows which JC was able to get on, but I was not.  Coming around to one of the first bridges, the tide was nearly perfect, and shorebirds were in scattered flocks below us.  It took a little work, but we eventually figured out that we had nearly pure flocks of Least Sandpipers (122.5), then Western Sandpipers (123.5) with a few stragglers mixed into the flocks that we had.  Lighting was good enough to pick out the yellow and black legs respectively. 

Peeps!

Behind a bunch of westerns, we were excited when we got a Semipalmated Plover (124.5), then got a second and a third next to them!  We were watching the Killdeer's cute little cousins when JC heard a call note and followed it to a group of shorebirds flying overhead.  "Whimbrel!" (125.5)   He called it out, and Terry and I got our binoculars up to find the big shorebirds with the long droopy bills.  It seemed to me that the wings were long and pointed, and it was nice to hear them call.  I know that the start of May is a near perfect time to get these birds, but I've never gotten them in King County where I live.  In Mason, they're a code 4 bird, so it was a nice surprise.

Continuing on the walk, we were able to add a few birds that had arrived since my last visit - American Goldfinch (126.5) and Brown-headed Cowbird (127.5).  Marsh Wrens, Savannah Sparrows and Common Yellowthroats were among the other abundant birds, and we had a surprise sighting of Eurasian Collared-Dove, a bird I've had in a few places in the county, but not at Theler.  We returned to the parking lot as I hit Terry with a few last minute queries, then JC and I headed back into Belfair for a nice slow evening.

A nice slow evening

I hadn't stopped in at the Union River Grill, so we made that dinner - a burger and a BLT.  It was nice to sit with the plans laid out for the big day we had planned on Saturday.  JC looked at the long list of birds that I had on as possibilities, and started to think about the Mason County list in general.  There are some birds that haven't been seen in the county, and it's always interesting to think of which ones might be most likely.

Creative addenda

While I was away at the bathroom, he penciled in his guesses:  Say's Phoebe, Sage Thrasher, Swainson's Hawk and Loggerhead Shrike.  The fun part was, I have a slightly dated list, and two of the ones he had penciled in (the Hawk and the Phoebe) had actually appeared on the list since.  I've only had a chance to add a bird to a county list once - a Yellow-breasted Chat in Island County, but it would be fun to do the same here at some point in the year!

We finished a quite decent dinner and went to Belfair to set up the tent.  The beach was pretty empty, and the woods at that hour didn't give us much of interest except some very loud Orange-crowned Warblers, not the first time that I had them singing loudly in the evening.  We hit the sack around 9-10 with no alarm set, figuring that we would be up early wanting to find some owls. 

Full Moon over Belfair State Park