Crowds flock to harbor for return of shorebirds

By Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published May 02, 2008

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HOQUIAM – Leave it to a birder with 30 years of experience peering through expensive binoculars to find the one odd shorebird out of thousands milling, flying and eating near the Sandpiper Trail at the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge.

"It's the same size of a western sandpiper, but it has a bright, orangish-red on its head and back," birder Richard Isherwood of Port Townsend said as he gazed through his spotting scope. "It's a very funny shade of red, and it has black legs."

Marian Bailey, a wildlife biologist for the Grays Harbor and Nisqually National Wildlife refuges, took a look through Isherwood's scope.

"Well, we're going to have to pull the book out," she said as dozens of other birders lugging spotting scopes and cameras rigged with massive telephoto lenses scurried over to look at the mystery bird.

Birders will have plenty of chances to see thousands of birds this weekend at the world-famous Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival.

The festival lures people from around the world to the mudflats and beaches of Grays Harbor County to see millions of shorebirds taking a feeding and rest break during their migration to Arctic breeding grounds. Many of the birds fly thousands of miles — from South America or even farther.

Birders are seeing gatherings of 10,000 birds at one time — or even more, Bailey said.

"When the faucet is on, the faucet is on," she said.

Millions of shorebirds make the stop to dig their bills into Grays Harbor's many mudflats, which teem with tasty marine worms, crustaceans and shellfish. More birds roll in even as others take off for the Arctic, Bailey said.

Birders at Bowerman Basin on Friday morning spotted dunlins, western sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, dowitchers and other species of birds.

Bill Jenkins and Susie LaPalm of Summit Lake drove out to Bowerman Basin to see huge flocks of tiny shorebirds take to the air in wheeling, color- flashing, living patterns.

Jenkins said birds are hard to resist, and shorebirds are all over Grays Harbor beaches and wetlands this time of year — and well into summer.

"But I hope none of my friends see me and learn that I'm a bird nerd," Jenkins said with a laugh.

Birders tentatively identified the mystery bird as a red-necked stint, a tiny shorebird that spends its winters in Australia and parts of southeast Asia, Bailey said.

Red-necked stints breed in Alaska and Siberia.

Bailey said she'll have to check photographs of the bird before confirming the find.

"It was a very unusual bird," Isherwood said.

Chester Allen can be reached at callen@theolympian.com or 360-754-5226.