Great Sedge Island 9/26--Final Trip of the Year?

Greg & I took advantage of the summery weather and made what is probably our final trip of the year out to the Sedge Islands. We still haven't got the tides to match the predictions but today there were lots of sand bars and lots of birds on those sand bars.

The Marbled Godwits remain in place. We saw 5 today.

Marbled Godwit with oystercatcher & gull
Photos © Greg Prelich

We managed to conjure up a couple of new birds (for the islands). I told Greg we should be on the lookout for Great Cormorant and within 5 minutes of my saying it, he'd found one, then later another. 

I was also searching for "winter" sandpipers and the last bird on our list turned out to be a couple of Dunlins we found mixed in with plovers and a Sanderling. 

For the trip we had 34 species:

Canada Goose  16
Double-crested Cormorant  75
Great Cormorant  2
Brown Pelican  25
Great Blue Heron  2
Great Egret  50
Snowy Egret  30
Little Blue Heron  1
Tricolored Heron  1
Osprey  1
Clapper Rail  1
American Oystercatcher  25
Black-bellied Plover  30
Semipalmated Plover  20
Greater Yellowlegs  1
Willet (Western)  10     Exact count
Lesser Yellowlegs  3
Marbled Godwit  5    
Sanderling  1
Dunlin  2
Least Sandpiper  6
Semipalmated Sandpiper  3
Short-billed Dowitcher  2
Laughing Gull  25
Ring-billed Gull  1
Herring Gull  100
Great Black-backed Gull  20
Caspian Tern  5
Common Tern  2
Forster's Tern  3
Royal Tern  15
crow sp.  1
Tree Swallow  250
Northern Mockingbird  1
Red-winged Blackbird  1