(migrations)

West Coast Way Station

By Frank Graham Jr.

Washington State's Bowerman Basin may not match the celebrity of San Francisco Bay or Alaska's Copper River delta on the migrant shorebird stopover itinerary. But now impressive numbers and the basin's topography are changing that perception. Each spring half a million shorebirds flying north to their breeding grounds in Canada and Alaska find rest and vital fuel (in the form of polychaetes, tubeworms, and other small marine invertebrates) in the 94-square-mile Gray's Harbor estuary. The basin's emergent tidal mudflats are slightly elevated above the rest of the estuary. As the tide rises, feeding birds converge in spectacular assemblages on the still uncovered flats. ¶ The basin's 1,500 acres were protected in 1992 within the Gray's Harbor National Wildlife Refuge. This critical habitat is also designated an Important Bird Area (IBA), largely because of its significance to western sandpipers, which make up 50 percent to 70 percent of its shorebird visitors. Other birds passing through include dunlins and red knots, an Audubon WatchList species. ¶ Local Audubon activists pushed hard for the refuge. They continue to buy land around the basin, which is threatened by polluted runoff from development as well as by invasive plants such as phragmites and Japanese knotweed. The Gray's Harbor Audubon Society cosponsors a shorebird festival in spring, when the concentrations of birds are easy to see from the refuge's Sandpiper Trail boardwalk. Bowerman Basin is west of Hoquiam, about two and a half hours from Seattle.

For information on Audubon's IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS program, visit www.audubon.org, go to Birds & Science/Bird Conservation, and pull down to Important Bird Areas.

© 2005 National Audubon Society

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