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.
One of my local beaches at a medium tide. Deer prints and shorebird tracks.
Killdeer and Western sandpipers.
Westerns are our most common peeps. Only seen in spring and fall
Peep foot and beak sign on a rare sandy beach
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.
Hoodies. September 22
Juvenile male Hooded merganser. September 14
A lone Gadwall looking for any port in a storm, even a flock of diving ducks. September 23
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.
This gull looks about as purely Glaucous-winged as they get, with wingtips the same shade grey as its mantle. Most of the “GWGUs” have some degree of darker wingtips.
Notable is its white head, not yet molted into winter speckled grey. Photo: September 15.
(It’s lurking around the oystercatchers in case there’s something to good to snatch.)
Freshly fledged GWGUs. September 16.
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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October 10. Compare the size of the GW gull (on right) to the Mews!
October 10. Belted kingfisher with Mew gulls (aka Short-billed) on a dock
Horned grebes are among the earliest arrivals for the winter season.
FOS this year: October 3
Horned grebe’s winter color much more subtle than its breeding plumage
Terrestrial birds hang out by the shore too.
Beach crows aka Northwestern crows used to be considered a separate species but in 2020 they were officially lumped into American crow since they have hybridized so much they aren’t distinctive genetically. Nevertheless, the beach crows that hang out here — and only near the shore — are visibly smaller than the American crows on the mainland.
Why the Northwestern Crow Vanished Overnight
a late Savannah sparrow. September 21.
October 13. Song sparrows are everywhere, including the beach
October 13. Pacific Wren foraging in the driftwood
October 13. On the path by the beach: Fox sparrow newly arrived. Ours are a subspecies of the Sooty Fox sparrow (Passerella iliaca fuliginosa)
“Breeds on mainland coast of se. Alaska (south of Stikine River) and coastal British Columbia, except Queen Charlotte Is., south to nw. Washington”
Redtails are common over our shorelines.
Bald eagles are starting to show up again. They mostly depart for mainland river early salmon runs after juvs fledge, and then trickle back in late fall. By winter there will be gazillions once the migrators from Canada appear.
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:
That channel is for draining this part of the Flats but there was only all saltwater in it at the time. Browns Slough. Most of the aquatic bird life to see was along its banks on this visit, including Least sandpipers, Greater Yellowlegs, LB dowitchers, killdeer
Surprising to see coots in saltwater.
Assemblage of ducks in the distance, mostly mallards and wigeons by their voices
Green-winged teal have arrived. They mainly forage by scooping very shallow water by the muddy shore.
Snow geese literally coming in for the season. I could hear their voices. eBird reports in the following few days described them in the thousands.
Browns Slough. The cottonwood tree on right hosts an active eagle nest
One of the pair in the cottonwood. Foliage hasn’t dropped yet so it’s hard to see the nest.
Great Blue heron successfully fishing in Browns Slough
Greater Yellowlegs
Always surprising to me how big Yellowlegs are and how small teal are
Long-billed dowitchers
Fir island quiet before the big influx of winter birds
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!
FOS bufflehead October 20
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.
Horned grebes in our first rain of the season. FOS Red-breasted merganser was also this day: October 21.
Dawn Chorus is now open for your birdy reports of the week and fall season.