Report from Mike Morrell
I spent about 4 hours yesterday mostly at Cable Beach and then at the mouth of Beadnell Creek. I was focusing on gulls. The intertidal is thick with attached herring spawn, there appeared to be quite a bit of drifting spawn on pieces of seaweed, and there were two tidelines high on the beach with rather sparse, fairly dried-out spawn. At the mouth of the creek there were extensive drifts of loose spawn high on the beach north of the creek.
At Cable Beach I estimated at least 2,000 gulls on and near shore. The species breakdown of 500 or so gulls that were close enough to examine carefully was approximately 60% Mew, 20% Glaucous-winged, and 10% each for Thayer’s and California. Also we found one flock of 17 Bonaparte’s Gulls, the first I’ve seen this year. Also I identified one Herring Gull, and there may have been others. As the tide came in onto the flat, a flock of 40 Brant landed briefly near shore but then flew out to stand on the T-Bar on the shellfish lease before I lost track of them.
At the creek mouth and northward as far as I could see there was a dense flock of gulls on the shore and offshore to about 500m out. My conservative estimate of total gulls in this area was 12,000. The gulls were loafing, feeding on dense drifts of herring spawn high on the beach and bathing in the outflow of the creek. The 800+ near the creek mouth that I looked at carefully were about 80% Glaucous-winged, 10% Mew, and 5% each Thayer’s and California. Again I identified one Herring Gull with certainty, and there probably were others in the flock.
Other than gulls, I saw only 30+ Red-breasted and 3 Common Mergansers, about 20 Common Goldeneye, and single Harlequin flying south, and no Scoters, Scaup or Long-tailed Ducks. The absence of these latter species is noteworthy and is what I’ve seen in that area on two other occasions in the last week. There was no intense feeding activity offshore, though there were more than 100 Pacific Loons in a loose flock in mid-channel and several Common Loons near shore. There were also several small, loose flocks of Horned Grebes. There were also many 10s of Bald Eagles perched and cruising the shoreline.
Mike
