With the weather forecast for Seattle - where I was to spend the daylight hours of March 15th before flying back to London in the evening - ranging from wet to very wet to ‘British’, I decided my best bet might to be to try for wintering alcids and loons from one of the ferries that cross Puget Sound. Given how little time I had (and given also that I stopped thinking that getting soaked and miserably cold was somehow manly or enjoyable a long time ago) it seemed a reasonable compromise between staying in bed and getting taxis and buses to stand in a Park somewhere wiping the rain off my glasses.

Firming up my decision was a post by this blog’s own Mike called Birding Bainbridge Island. Back when Mike was still a lone 10,000 Birder he and Sara had managed to join a guided tour that had gone to said island, and - in similar weather - had seen a good selection of birds, including a number I needed for my Big Year list (which has been stuck in the high 400s for about three weeks now - roll on the spring and all those migrants I say…).

A wet Seattle seen from half-way across Puget Sound

West coast of Bainbridge Island. Would I like a house here? Oh, I think so…

Rather than visit Bainbridge Island though, I decided instead to make the slightly longer journey to Bremerton on the Kitsap Peninsula. I could see Bainbridge from my hotel room and it looked as grey and soggy as the streets of Seattle city centre. Bremerton might just be better and, if by some chance, the weather was improved - or the ferry terminal was built in the middle of nowhere and the water surrounding it a mass of sea-duck - I’d have a wander around: if not then I’d get the return ferry straight back and get some sleep before the flight. Plan made I left the hotel to walk down to the ferry terminal with a wish-list of about ten species: three alcids, a loon, a grebe, a couple of cormorants, a duck, and a raptor, and a “wow, wasn’t expecting that!” that I always go into the field hoping for. How did I get on?

Before I’d even got onto the “Walla Walla” (the massive boat that was to be my floating observation tower for the morning) I’d seen three of my target birds in the waters around the terminal: the first of thirty or so Pigeon Guillemots (most of which were already in their smart dark summer suits, bright red legs paddling away beneath them); a Red-necked Grebe (a bird that’s not always easy to find in the UK, but is common off Seattle this time of year); and a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneye diving for mollluscs and shellfish right by one of the enormous wooden pilings the ferries dock against. Also just offshore was a small flock of twenty Western Grebe and a pair of Red-breasted Merganser, while the air was full of the usual wheeling and squawking Western and Glaucous-winged Gulls (and the myriad combinations of odd gulls formed by the liaisons of two species which don’t really seem to care who they mate with as long as their partner is loud and scavenges bread off passers-by). Not a bad start really (which sounds a bit blase as I haven’t seen a Pigeon Guillemot for many years and they’re really lovely-looking birds).

Breeding-plumaged Pigeon Guillemot

Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens

I’d chosen the ride to Bremerton rather than Bainbridge Island partly because a) crossings are very regular, and b) because the route follows stretches of coastline - where I hoped birds would be sheltering - rather than just traversing the deep water of the Sound only (where they wouldn’t). I’m glad to say I guessed right, as I saw very little at all out in the middle of the Sound (bar, oddly, four Black Brant that appeared out of nowhere and splashed down in front of the ferry) but as soon as the boat reached the shallower more protected water between the islands and the mainland I started seeing birds again.

Black Brant Branta bernicla

The commonest species of interest were Pelagic Cormorant, with many birds sporting bright white flank patches, and Brandt’s Cormorants, a more solid, thicker-set species than Pelagic which in the summer grows sprays of straggly white facial hair like some aging motorcyclist. Far less common - and perhaps the most interesting species of all as far as I was concerned - was Rhinoceros Auklet, a bird I’ve not seen for many years indeed. I think I saw about ten of these plump, little alcids (bearing in mind I did the same route twice within an hour there could have been repeats). Full summer birds with their striking white head markings and yellow bills were easy enough to identify, but I have to admit the first few winter-plumaged birds I saw - which looked like dark chunks of floating wood - caused me a few problems until I stopped fantasising about finding Cassin’s Auklet and realised what they were.

Non-breeding (left) and breeding-plumaged (right)
Rhinocerous Auklets Cerorhinca monocerata

Brandt’s Cormorant Phalacrocorax penicillatus

Pelagic Cormorant Phalacrocorax pelagicus
(Bremerton Ferry Terminal - and, yes, the sun was out (but not for long)!!)

I did actually see another alcid - the Common Guillemot (or Common Murre as it’s known in North America) - a species that I will see in the hundreds the next time I go down to Portland Bird Observatory). It was though yet another Big Year species - the sixth of the day. One that was followed very quickly by the seventh, the first of two or three beautiful summer-plumaged Great Northern Divers (or Common Loons), looking stunning in their dark breeding plumages with black-and-white barring on their necks and backs.

By this time I was almost back at Seattle, having decided not to bother with Bremerton but to expend what little energy I had leaning into the wind looking for birds from the ferry again. I’m glad I did too, as I saw most of the aforementioned species again as well as a small party of White-winged Scoters, a large raft of several hundred Surf Scoters bobbing about off what looked like some sort of aquaculture platform, and a few individuals of commoner species like Mew Gull, Bufflehead, American Wigeon, and Horned Grebe.

Surf Scoters Melanitta perspicillata

A very good morning’s birding, and especially so as the round-trip had cost me just 6USD. Considering what I’d spent in Los Angeles the week before on car-rentals and gasoline it was a superb return on minimal expenditure. I am though, as friends will know, never completely satisfied and despite seeing loads of interesting birds there was one I had seemingly missed: Bald Eagle, a raptor almost synonymous with the Washington coast in winter. And I had looked very hard for them, scanning the coastline and the thickly-wooded islands for any sign of a ‘flying barn door’…sadly, though, nothing. Rather remarkably though as the ferry pulled into Seattle, I suddenly saw TWO Bald Eagles tussling with each other within metres of the dock. I only managed to grab a record shot of one of them before they both flew off, but it was enough to give my first record of the year and Big Year species number 500. A cracking end to two hours well spent I reckon, and a trip I’d recommend to anyone who wants a quick and easy way to see some of the northwest’s birds.

3rd year (?) Bald Eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus

Oh, and if you want to get very close views of the local gulls (sometimes perhaps TOO close) just stand on the open deck of the ferry with a bag of sandwiches and prepare to get visited by some large and bulky larids within minutes…