In the rain and wind, and at high tide on Saturday morning a friend and I decided to tour March Point to look for interesting shorebirds or waterfowl.  We had seen a Long-billed curlew in the area earlier in the week and hoped that it might be back.  In that respect we were disappointed, but we found a group of three Black turnstones working in the eelgrass that had washed up on the shore.

We continued off of March Point to the Northern Lights area of the Swinomish Reservation and there, in a parking lot, found our lost Long-billed curlew!  We were ecstatic!  We watched the curlew wander around an asphalt parking area for about ten minutes before flushing when a group of gulls flew by.  We lost it for awhile but then were surprised to see it bathing in a fresh water pond almost beside us.  We called the leader of the morning’s Skagit Audubon filed trip and he brought the group over to the casino area and we were all able to view the bird for a considerable time.  I wasn’t nearly as close as when I took the photos earlier in the week on March Point, but the bird was much more active while bathing.  I took 97 photos of the curlew and saved 30… it was very difficult disposing of  the photos.

This is an almost unbelievablely beautiful bird, especially in some of its dynamic poses.  The curlew finally got spooked again and didn’t immediately return to the pond, so we called it quits for the morning.