Yesterday Ryan Wiese and I headed to Ocean Shores and Gray’s Harbor to try for fall vagrant shorebirds and had a great day.  We high tide was 8+ feet and expected about 5 PM so we arranged our timing around being at Bottle Beach about 2:30 expecting the usual crowd of shorebirds in the last remaining mud in the harbor.  I’m glad the rest of the day was great, because we both experienced a first for Bottle Beach. Not a single shorebird, not even a Killdeer or BBPL an we were there at what seemed the perfect tide time.

Anyway we headed first for Brown’s Point Jetty, where we made a brief stop only because no rock shorebirds were noted, though the Sooty Shearwaters numbered in the hundreds per minute going mostly northward.  From there we went to the Oyhut Game Range where good rarities had been being seen, and hit the jackpot there.  On entering from the Tonquin Ave parking area, there were few to no birds in the near pond area.  We walked around the pond out into the back area, following a group of young birders, and had great looks at several Lapland Longspurs.  They were exceptionally cooperative, getting nice scope views at close range.  From there we located a flock of golden plovers in the middle of the not-too-muddy middle area.  We would see first 6, then 8 then 7 then 9 birds walking in and out of the vegetation.  Two SBDO flew in to join them, and shortly a flock of 11 goldens and the two SBDO flow off toward the beach.  On looking back there remained 6 golden plovers, so we estimated the flock at 17 individuals.  One was less golden, had a bright white supercillium, a dark cap and longer wings and we felt confident that this one was American, the others appeared Pacific.

We then followed the rest of the birders to find the rum0red Ruff past the tidal stream toward the STP entrance.  It was not difficult to find this bird, as we simply followed the spotting scopes, and we had nice looks at the Ruff.  We hiked down the beach to the base of the jetty but still no rockpipers.

The long walk out gave more looks at the 6 remaining golden plovers, and we revisited the jetty.  There we had this second time 9 Black Turnstones, 1 Ruddy Turnstone, and 3 Wandering Tattlers along with a nice flock of sanderling and the usual gulls, loons, cormorants, and Sooty’s.

We then made our trip to no birds at Bottle beach and dropped by Tokeland to see 9 Willet’s and a nice flock of about 45 Marbled Godwits, had a Whimbrel and a LBCU at Graveyard Spit, and headed home.

Ryan got 5 new WA year birds on his quest for 300 this year, and I had a great day at the coast.