[obol] Florence and Fern Ridge birds Sunday, Skinner Butte birds Monday

[DAVID IRONS]

Yesterday, David Fix, Jennifer Brown, Diane Pettey and I birded the Florence 
area.  We spent most of our time doing seawatches and shorebirding.  We 
relocated the Reeve along the "Dotteral Dike" halfway out the South Jetty 
Rd.  The other highlight of our day was a very bizarre curve-billed 
Red-necked Phalarope that was in the small tidal pool at the base of the 
North Jetty (pullout at the bottom of the hill as you start out the road).  
There were about 150 Red-necked Phalaropes and 300+ peeps along the beach 
there at high tide.  We also had a single Common Tern there.

I spotted the phalarope as it bathed in deeper water out from the beach.  It 
had a bill that was at least 30% longer than an of the other phalaropes.  
The basal half was thicker than a typical phalarope and then the bird had 
obvious down curve to the outer half of the bill.  Diane Pettey took several 
pics of this bird, one of which revealed a noticeable bulge at the point 
where the bill started curving downward.  The head pattern on this bird was 
also quite strange.  It was very mottled and lacked the typcial dark cap, 
dark auricular, white supercilium pattern of a juv. Red-necked Phalarope.  
The bill was virtually identical to that of a Curlew Sandpiper, but every 
thing else about this bird (aside from bill and head pattern) was normal for 
a Red-necked Phalarope.  I have a jpg. of this bird if anyone wants to see 
it.  Unfortunately, the angle does not fully show the bill curvature, but it 
does show the head well.

Other birds of interest:

Sooty Shearwater -- steady stream north past Heceta Beach and the North 
Jetty (probably 200 total)
Black-bellied Plover -- 1 basic plumaged adult at Crab Docks
Semipalmated Plover -- 60+ (at Crab Docks and Heceta Beach at Driftwood 
Shores Motel)
Marbled Godwit -- 1 Heceta Beach
Whimbrel -- 17 (one flock of South Jetty)
Wandering Tattler -- 2 (North Jetty)
Ruddy Turnstone -- 1 (North Jetty)
Black Turnstone -- 3 (North Jetty)
Western Sandpiper -- 600 total (Heceta Beach, North Jetty, Crab Docks and 
Dotteral Dike)
Least Sandpiper -- 50 (same sites as Westerns)
Rhinoceros Auklet -- 1 off Heceta Beach
Cassin's Auklets -- 2 off Heceta Beach
Marbled Murrelet -- 8 off Heceta Beach

On the way home we stopped at Royal Ave to look for the Buff-breasted 
Sandpiper.  We easily relocated it at Redhead Pond.  Several other birds 
came and went while we were there.  We also had both Yellowlegs, a flock of 
about  12 Dowitchers, a few peeps, heard two Pectoral Sandpipers, and saw 
two Virginia Rails.

This morning, Fix, Brown and I went to Skinner Butte to look for migrant 
passerines.  We had the following migrants:

Yellow Warbler -- 1
Townsend's Warbler -- 5+
Black-throated Gray Warbler -- 4+
Wilson's Warbler -- 1
Western Tanager -- 2

Dave Irons
Eugene, OR