Last week’s Dawn Chorus showed us offshore birds on the Salish Sea in fall. Today’s photodiary is a coda: birds near the shore this fall.
First, let’s see who’s been around in September and October along my local shorelines on the island. Beaches are few and short here, between rocky headlands, so we don’t get a lot of shorebirds per se, but you never know who might stop by.
Killdeer and Black oystercatchers are year-round shorebirds here. There’s a pair of oystercatchers who have claimed one bay I visit on my daily walk and I see them frequently. They feed on limpets and clams. No sign of offspring this year for the oystercatchers although I’ve seen groups of 5-6 killdeer this fall, possibly a family.
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Winter waterfowl do love our quiet bays, though most have not arrived yet. Hooded mergansers are the earliest arrivals since they nest as close as lakes and ponds right here in the county. They don’t move to saltwater until fall.
Gulls by shore at this season are mainly our resident Glaucous-winged/Olympic hybrid (GWGU x Western) and Mew gulls. The California gulls pretty much decamped for the open ocean by early October, an occasional straggler hanging out with the other local gulls.
In fall, newly fledged Glaucous-winged/Olympic gulls are learning how to fish. This video (posted in a Daily Bucket last month) captured a flock of fresh juveniles in September in very shallow water by the beach practicing how to catch crabs or fish just below the surface. They were snatching clamshells as a proxy for actual food.
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Horned grebes are among the earliest arrivals for the winter season.
FOS this year: October 3
Terrestrial birds hang out by the shore too.
We were over on the mainland a couple weekends ago (October 8 & 9) and of course we stopped at the Skagit River delta as we always do. The winter season hadn’t really started yet so it was pretty quiet, but there were signs of coming peak season. The sloughs were low unless the tide was in; summer drought season in the Pacific Northwest was long this year and there’s no runoff. A culvert allows fresh and salt water to freely flow up and down the slough through a remnant of dike. Neighboring dikes were moved back to restore the estuary character at what’s now a preserve.
Sightings at Hayton Reserve on Fir Island:
In midwinter there will be thousands of snow geese, swans (trumpeter and tundra), ducks of all kinds, and dunlin. Also lots of raptors.
Back at home, I’ve been watching the bays for arrivals here too. They are trickling in, but many more are still to come. Awaiting ducks, trumpeter swans, and geese, who will liven up the bays all winter. A special thrill for me is the hundreds of buffleheads. Just a few days ago, the first one arrived!
All the waterfowl are not just departing the frozen north, they are coming TO our abundant wetlands and shallow calm bays. The winter rain has finally arrived after an unprecedented stretch of drought. It’ll still be a while before the wetlands fill.
In the meantime, water birds enjoy the warm fresh rains of fall.
Dawn Chorus is now open for your birdy reports of the week and fall season.