Port Susan is one of the stars of a new publication by Audubon Washington.
Compiled by Tim Cullinan, biologist for the organization, "Important Bird Areas of Washington" highlights dozens of birding areas.
Port Susan was first nominated by a birder from Pilchuck Audubon Society, Cullinan said.
"It’s one of the best documented sites that we have. Volunteers have collected an extraordinary amount of information. Port Susan has a lot of mud flats and as a result it has a lot of shorebirds, either spending the winter there or flying through during migration.
"Primarily the importance is as a feeding area, or in the winter for waterfowl and particularly for one species of shorebirds, the dunlin," Cullinan said.
The dunlin is a small, cold-tolerant sandpiper. While most sandpipers go as far south as Chile and Argentina, the little dunlin is the most northerly wintering shorebird.
"Port Susan is particularly important for them because 25,000 to 30,000 spend the winter there in some years. It’s a pretty important migration stop."
"Important Bird Areas" is not the complete package. There are no sites in Skagit County, for instance, which means an obvious site such as Padilla Bay didn’t make the cut.
"It’s a status report and we recognize that there are a lot of areas that didn’t get included," he said.
So consider this volume one.
There were a few twists when compiling a list of significant avian hangouts in the state.
One surprise was Quartermaster Harbor, between Maury and Vashon islands.
"The local people pointed it out as a place that has extraordinary eelgrass beds that support a high density of herring and surf smelt spawning populations (that) provide a lot of food for the birds that spend the winter there," Cullinan said.
"The Western grebe has been declining throughout Puget Sound for the last 20 years but have been hanging on in Quartermaster Harbor," he said.
Another surprise was Point No Point north of Kingston. A birder with a picture-window view to the water has been keeping counts of winter waterfowl for years.
"That place had tens of thousands of seabirds and gulls and other aquatic birds. The way the currents go through there concentrates fish and other prey in there that provides a smorgasbord for wintering marine birds."
The Important Bird Area program started in Europe in the mid-1980s and now has projects in about 100 countries.
Bird experts screened the Washington nominations, looking for places that were home to threatened, endangered or rare bird species, or had large concentration of birds, or were remnants of native ecosystems.
Each site is described by its physical attributes, the birds and habitat, and conservation issues.
"We want to raise awareness, to get the attention of people who make decisions about land-use or land regulation decisions. We’ve sent copies of this book to state and local government officials, especially planning departments and other resource-management people, scientists, universities and libraries," Cullinan said.
"The ultimate objective is conservation."
For more information, call Audubon Washington in Olympia, 360-786-8020.
Mountain high: So many books have been written about climbing Everest that it’s hard to say which one should sit on top of the stack. But if cornered, I would nominate "Everest: Eighty Years of Triumph and Tragedy" ($35, Mountaineers Books) for the final scramble to the peak of words.
Now in its second edition, the anthology is a contender because of its photographs, the best overall collection of Everest photographs between two covers. Even if Everest has become a four-letter word during the past few years of overkill, an expedition through the photographs will provide a sense of place.
This edition includes the last 10 years of adventures and tragedies.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at P.O. Box 109, Shaw Island, WA 98296. E-mail her at songandword@rockisland.com. Or call 360-468-3964.
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