Loony…

Temp in the 50s, mostly sunny, some afternoon showers, moderate S wind.

Same old, same old around town, so we headed up to Clam Lagoon. Nothing on the flats.

At the Seawall, we saw a bunch of Horned and Red-necked Grebes and, while scanning for more, found a breeding-plumaged Yellow-billed Loon. The Emperor Goose that we saw on the flats yesterday was on — fittingly — Goose Rocks today.

Emperor Goose (with cormorants), Goose Rocks, Sept 24, 2014

We continued down to Lake Shirley where only half of the scaup flock was there. However, the number of pintails had increased to ten. As we continued around the lagoon, we saw the rest of the scaup out in the lagoon, along with the two Tufted Ducks.

Upon returning to the Seawall, we spotted a winter-plumaged Common Loon and a breeding-plumaged Pacific Loon to make it a loon-trifecta! This brought our trip list up to 62 — tying our previous high.

Late in the afternoon, upon returning to town, we drove over to the Sweeper Cove breakwater to see if anything was in the bay. As we parked, Barb spotted a small dark bird in the water. We quickly got on it and discovered it to be a Crested Auklet! And there were TWO of them! For the next 45 minutes, we watched and photographed them to our utter delight. These were much closer than the one we saw last week — and that on was backlit. These were relatively close — very easy to see all of the details in the scope — and the lighting was at our backs. It was great seeing these birds with our feet planted on terra-firma instead of rocking on a boat.

Crested Auklet, off the Sweeper Cove breakwater, Sept 24, 2014

Crested Auklet diving, off the Sweeper Cove breakwater, Sept 24, 2014

One more day to go. We will be leaving around 5:30 tomorrow afternoon and expect to arrive home around 3:00 pm Friday. We won’t be updating the blog until Friday night at the earliest, and probably not until Saturday.