On the last day of April 2016 I headed out on my annual Tahoma Audubon Society fundraising project the Birdathon with the help of 4 strong birders. Kay, Ken Brown, Laurel Parshall and Eric Dudley met me at the park-and-ride and we squeezed into my Subaru to head out. We started immediately with 4 species in the McDonald’s parking lot: American Crow, House Sparrow, Glaucous-winged gull and a singing White-crowned sparrow at 6 AM. This was the first of 17 e-bird lists I’d record today. You can still contribute by clicking here.
We had a lot of things going for us to accumulate a good list of species. Excellent birders, great weather, a long spring day of daylight, but against us was the calendar. I usually do this “big day” type of outing about May 7-12th. By then the neotropical migrants have arrived and small remnants of the winter visitors remain, maximizing the species available. This year, my first year in retirement, I’m just having too much fun traveling to pick a date in that time frame so April 30th was the best available date.
We started our day at Spanaway Marsh where the dawn chorus started with Chipping sparrow in the parking area, and had us finding 6 species of warblers including first-of-year county MacGilvery’s and Yellow warblers along with Black-throated gray, Wilson’s, Orange-crowned warblers and Common yellowthroat. We missed Hutton’s vireo where is “always” sings there and never recovered one all day. List at 39 as we headed for JBLM for 4 stops.
After talking with Bruce Labar about his day out on JBLM this week with the resident expert Nathaniel Swecker (Check out his web site on JBLM Birding) we made stops at both ends of Johnson Marsh and get some great birds including Hermit warbler, Cassin’s vireo, House wren, and Virginia Rail. Crossing the East Gate Road onto the Chamber’s lake area we saw a crazy number of Chipping sparrows, one Western Bluebird male was near the next box I get mine first sighting at each spring, we heard a Purple martin calling overhead, flushed one California quail, and headed across Hwy 507 about 10 AM to try for Western Meadowlark and Vesper sparrow, Yes on the WEME, no on the VESP.
About 10:30 we headed back toward’s Puyallup where we dropped Kay off at home, made a quick drive through of Wildwood park hoping for kinglets or woodpeckers (not today) and headed for the Lesser Goldfinch spot near the Sumner Riverside Disc Golf course. There we located Bruce Labar and his WOS group, but not the LEGO.
The 56th Street Stormwater Pond’s were kind, giving us our only shorebirds of the day, one lonely Lesser Sandpiper, a hard to see Wilson’s snipe lurking in the weeds, Killdeer, along with Cackling goose a Lesser Scaup, and a variety of ducks. We headed for Tacoma with our list at 72 species.
Our first stop was the Gog-li-hi-ti mitigated marsh where the winter gulls were gone, and we added no new species. At the Dick Gilmur turnout on Marine View Drive we did better. Our first salt water of the day added nice looks at 4 Marbled Murrelets in their breeding “marbled” plumage, not the black-and-white we more often see in winter, along with Brandt’s cormorant, Bonaparte’s gull, Belted kingfisher, and Pigeon Guillemot. At Brown’s point lighthouse we had an Osprey flying over the bay, spotted by Dr. Anthony Chen who joined us for the afternoon along with a first cycle Ring-billed gull spotted by who else but Ken Brown, our mentor and gull expert.

We wound up the day with stops at the Mountain View Cemetery Marsh, Chamber’s Creek, Sunnyside Beach, and finished strong with 5 new species at Ft. Steilacom Park. On the bay we tried for expected easy birds like Surf Scoter and Common Loon without any luck, but at Ft Steilacom we added the expected Cliff swallows and lingering Ruddy Duck, but also had both Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers on trees on opposite sides of the trail. Both were males with the bright red head patch, and it was really cool to see the size difference.
A pair of bushtits closed the day, and we ended up with 92 species total.

Thanks to all participants for a fine day, to all contributors for their support of Tahoma Audubon and their educational and conservation work. and to the leaders at TAS for the work of organizing this event.
You can still contribute to TAS by by clicking here.
Thanks.

Good birding

Ed Pullen
Here is the species list: The number below the species name is the number of eBird checklists the species was note at, and the number to the right of the species is the total number of individual birds of the species reported to eBird. Ignore the May 1-6 columns.

Species Name Apr 30 May 1 May 2 May 3 May 4 May 5 May 6
Cackling Goose 46
(1) — — — — — —
Canada Goose 52
(5) — — — — — —
Wood Duck 5
(2) — — — — — —
Gadwall 18
(3) — — — — — —
American Wigeon 8
(3) — — — — — —
Mallard 44
(10) — — — — — —
Northern Shoveler 2
(2) — — — — — —
Green-winged Teal 6
(1) — — — — — —
Ring-necked Duck 4
(1) — — — — — —
Greater Scaup 4
(1) — — — — — —
Lesser Scaup 5
(2) — — — — — —
Bufflehead 80
(6) — — — — — —
Common Goldeneye 16
(3) — — — — — —
Barrow’s Goldeneye 1
(1) — — — — — —
Common Merganser 35
(5) — — — — — —
California Quail 1
(1) — — — — — —
Pied-billed Grebe 11
(5) — — — — — —
Horned Grebe 2
(2) — — — — — —
Brandt’s Cormorant 13
(1) — — — — — —
Double-crested Cormorant 26
(3) — — — — — —
cormorant sp. 9
(2) — — — — — —
Great Blue Heron 12
(4) — — — — — —
Osprey 1
(1) — — — — — —
Bald Eagle 7
(5) — — — — — —
Red-tailed Hawk 5
(4) — — — — — —
Virginia Rail 1
(1) — — — — — —
American Coot 5
(2) — — — — — —
Killdeer 21
(6) — — — — — —
Least Sandpiper 16
(2) — — — — — —
Wilson’s Snipe 1
(1) — — — — — —
Pigeon Guillemot 7
(3) — — — — — —
Marbled Murrelet 4
(1) — — — — — —
Bonaparte’s Gull 16
(3) — — — — — —
Ring-billed Gull 1
(1) — — — — — —
Glaucous-winged Gull 76
(8) — — — — — —
Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (hybrid) 1
(1) — — — — — —
Rock Pigeon 11
(4) — — — — — —
Band-tailed Pigeon 4
(2) — — — — — —
Eurasian Collared-Dove 5
(1) — — — — — —
Mourning Dove 27
(3) — — — — — —
Anna’s Hummingbird 3
(2) — — — — — —
Rufous Hummingbird 2
(2) — — — — — —
Belted Kingfisher 3
(2) — — — — — —
Red-breasted Sapsucker 4
(3) — — — — — —
Downy Woodpecker 1
(1) — — — — — —
Hairy Woodpecker 1
(1) — — — — — —
Northern Flicker 7
(5) — — — — — —
American Kestrel 1
(1) — — — — — —
Pacific-slope Flycatcher 6
(4) — — — — — —
Cassin’s Vireo 2
(1) — — — — — —
Steller’s Jay 3
(3) — — — — — —
Western Scrub-Jay 6
(3) — — — — — —
American Crow 66
(11) — — — — — —
American/Northwestern Crow 2
(1) — — — — — —
Common Raven 1
(1) — — — — — —
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 1
(1) — — — — — —
Purple Martin 2
(1) — — — — — —
Tree Swallow 61
(9) — — — — — —
Violet-green Swallow 69
(7) — — — — — —
Barn Swallow 13
(2) — — — — — —
Cliff Swallow 20
(1) — — — — — —
swallow sp. 2
(1) — — — — — —
Black-capped Chickadee 8
(4) — — — — — —
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 8
(5) — — — — — —
Bushtit 2
(1) — — — — — —
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
(1) — — — — — —
Brown Creeper 2
(1) — — — — — —
House Wren 7
(5) — — — — — —
Pacific Wren 5
(3) — — — — — —
Marsh Wren 31
(5) — — — — — —
Bewick’s Wren 3
(2) — — — — — —
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 2
(1) — — — — — —
Western Bluebird 1
(1) — — — — — —
American Robin 47
(13) — — — — — —
European Starling 50
(10) — — — — — —
Orange-crowned Warbler 12
(6) — — — — — —
MacGillivray’s Warbler 2
(1) — — — — — —
Common Yellowthroat 29
(7) — — — — — —
Yellow Warbler 16
(4) — — — — — —
Yellow-rumped Warbler 23
(7) — — — — — —
Black-throated Gray Warbler 7
(3) — — — — — —
Hermit Warbler 2
(1) — — — — — —
Wilson’s Warbler 7
(5) — — — — — —
warbler sp. (Parulidae sp.) 1
(1) — — — — — —
Chipping Sparrow 33
(3) — — — — — —
Dark-eyed Junco 18
(7) — — — — — —
White-crowned Sparrow 42
(13) — — — — — —
Savannah Sparrow 8
(3) — — — — — —
Song Sparrow 25
(11) — — — — — —
Spotted Towhee 7
(5) — — — — — —
Red-winged Blackbird 16
(3) — — — — — —
Western Meadowlark 1
(1) — — — — — —
Brown-headed Cowbird 9
(3) — — — — — —
House Finch 18
(7) — — — — — —
Purple Finch 12
(4) — — — — — —
American Goldfinch 9
(3) — — — — — —
House Sparrow 9
(4) — — — — — —