Today 12 TAS birders set out to see what we could find in Pierce County on a drop-dead beautiful sunny day. I had scouted the saltwater spots over the last few days and except for the King Eider not much was terribly interesting so we decided to try some other areas. After meeting at the Hwy 512-I5 park and ride we headed for the Mountain View Cemetery marsh and oak woodlands. Raptor’s ruled the early morning, with two Peregrine Falcons spotted right off by Richard Smethurst and later Red-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk were seen as well. The second Cooper’s cooperatively sat on a small tree on the edge of the oaks area and kept the sparrows hunkered down while we enjoyed great views.
Next stop was at American Lake. First we went to the Camp Murray Boat Launch site and relocated the Canvasbacks that I had seen yesterday, and soaked up the sunshine as it started to warm up. Over at Harry Todd Park we got nice comparison looks at Mew, California and Ring-billed gulls. Love it when nearly all the gulls are adults. No hoped for Boneparte’s flock to search through for Little gull, but more sunshine, waterfowl and gulls made it a nice quick stop.
Next we headed for Mount’s Road where a Greater Yellowlegs was the best find. My favorite stop of the day was the last one, as the sun really warmed everyone up and we sorted through a nice flock of Golden-crowned sparrows and located a White-throated sparrow. It was seen really well by everyone, and several photos were obtained. This one is by Kathleen Miller.

We also had great looks at Fox Sparrow, some of these were even singing.
We ended the day about 1:20 PM. It was really fun to get out with a group of experienced birders on a day when the weather could not have been nicer.