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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MKinHK" data-source="post: 3412637" data-attributes="member: 21760">Many thanks Jeff - I also had the same response on the ID forum - and its a lifer!On the day before I was due to fly back to Hong Kong I had a few hours to spare and went up to Edmonds – about 30 minutes north of downtown Seattle by train – to see if I could fluke an Orca from the shore and to explore the potential of the marsh and the sea here, which looked pretty good from eBird. There were no Orcas, but in the two hours I did have I still added significantly to the trip list.The train journey was a cultural experience in itself. King Station is a beautiful 100-year-old building with white marble-clad walls and floors, elegant chandeliers and a wonderful old clock. Unfortunately the booking process was as antiquated as the building. When I bought my ticket I was not allocated a seat on the train, but was told to go and queue for a seat number near the departure gate. I spent 40-odd minutes in a queue that filled most of the hall to receive a piece of pink card with a hand-written seat and coach number. This was utterly astonishing in the most technologically developed country in the world and in a city that hosts companies such as Microsoft and Boeing!  Entering the carriage was like a step back into the seventies, with beige leather seats like old-style business class <a href="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BV836_FCLASS_P_20120719183331.jpg" target="_blank">https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BV836_FCLASS_P_20120719183331.jpg</a> - complete with an in-flight magazine. My pink card was slotted into a special stub holder above my seat, and then, to my delight, as were about to pull out the bearded and buttoned station-master looked up and down the train and called out “All aboard”.  The upside of taking the train was that it ran along the pebble-beached edge of Puget Sound pretty much all the way to Edmonds, and I picked up 20-odd Great Blue Herons and even better a couple of light grey Harbour Seals, including one perched on a tiny sandbar, tail and head curled in the air like a podgy, but nonetheless elegant grey banana. Five or six small waders were most likely, but untickably, Spotted Sandpipers. American Crows and Glaucous-winged Gulls were the only other birds on show. I eventually arrived at Edmonds – helpfully right next to the ferry port and spent an enjoyable couple of hours not seeing any Orcas, but adding some good birds. The water immediately around the ferry terminal held several Pigeon Guillemots – all black with a large white oval on the wing – a couple of Brandt’s Cormrants, four or five distant Pacific Divers, several Surf Scoters and a handsome drake Harlequin asleep on a floating log about 60m offshore.  There were Glaucous-winged Gulls and Canada Geese, including one with a solitary gosling on the beach and I was pleased to pick up a very approachable Belted Kingfisher and a magnificent Bald Eagle that dropped onto a post just offshore to eat what I think was a crab, closely attended by an irritating pair of American Crows. Further out on the water, right on the far limit of identifiability with my bins, were a couple of single-figure groups of stocky Rhinoceros Auklets.  I was also pleased to add a bull California Fur Seal that cruised by just as the ferry to Victoria was leaving.Wandering over to the marsh on the other side of the railway tracks I was delighted to pish in a Marsh Wren which sang lustily from a bulrush and watch an immature Great Blue Heron stalking one of the pools. Other birds included four or five Mallards and a couple of Gadwalls, a Purple Martin and half-a-dozen Tree Swallow patrolling the skies, and a juvenile sparrow sp. and a fine pair of Common Yellowthroat in the scrub. Other species included Song and White-crowned Sparrows, American Robin, Red-winged Blackbirds and a couple of Bushtits. On the train back to Seattle I was surprised to see a single Kildeer in the marshalling yards just to the north of the city centre.CheersMike</blockquote>

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