[obol] Seaside Monday

[David Bailey]

Quiet at The Cove today, with fairly calm winds, though the surf was up. 
Lots of GLAUCOUS-WINGED and WESTERN GULLS and their progeny (sometimes 
of each species sometime of Herring x GW.) One Herring Gull. A few 
TURNSTONES, but I just checked briefly from the parking lot opposite 
Seltzer Park. I was looking mostly offshore and it was pretty dead out 
there for birds. I did sea one CA sea lion.

The beach between Ave. I and the turnaround at Broadway was scoured by 
the recent storms down to exposed cobbles in places, but no wrecked birds.

The beach between Gearhart and the SJ Columbia River was similar except 
for one set of HORNED PUFFIN WINGS attached to a fleshless keel and one 
scavenged RHINOCEROS AUKLET. There was also a single adult 
GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL carcass that looked like a fresh Bald Eagle kill 
that was picked clean in the breast region. All of these new birds (to 
me) were N.W. of the wreck of the Peter Iredale

Incidentally, if you want to see this shipwreck uncovered more than I 
can ever remember it being so, come down now. You can see the entire 
outline of the hull which recent scouring by the storms have unearthed 
from its sandy tomb.

1000 DUNLIN and 1000 or so SANDERLINGS were on the beach. Reports of 
numbers two orders of magnitude higher for at least Sanderling used to 
be reported from the Clatsop Beaches, but I have yet to see that in the 
4 winters I have been down here. Perhaps the shortening and steepening 
of the beaches a la E. Beach grass and dune stabilization as well as the 
subsequent westward march of the dunes has changed this shoreline 
ecosystem to be support fewer Sanderlings, or maybe it is from increased 
predation by Peregrine Falcons? Owen and Jeff and Harry and Mike and 
Curmudgeon and  Irons and Fix, and others, do you recall 10,000 or 
100,000 Sanderthings on the beaches when you used to drive them back in 
the 70s and 80s, or earlier? Dave Marshall??

I got a nice digital photo of an immature Peregrine Falcon which I will 
post to Eva/s blog now:

www.evacalidris.blgospot.com

Good Birding,
David

David C.Bailey
Seaside, Oregon