Dungeness Spit is a real place with a cool name and it looks like this:
It's about 5.5 miles long.
I left my house in absolute darkness at about 5:50am and drove through about 1.5 hours of absolute darkness followed by 30 minutes of slow light seeping in.
I got there, took a big dump in a park toilet (I always end up having to take shits in terrible park toilets without plumbing--this is the worst part of birding) and began my walk out the spit. The spit is very narrow and very long. There are signs around certain edges and central places on the spit asking you not to walk on them because erosion could make the spit not exist anymore. One of the signs said "BIRDS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT."
The water birds! Oh, the water birds. So, uh, there's a few types of birds that sit on the water like ducks but aren't ducks. Grebes, Loons, Alcids. And all of those have pointy beaks and separate summer and winter plumage (colors/patterns of feathers), and for the majority of them the winter plumage is dark gray on top and white on bottom. So when you're birding in winter and you see a thing with a pointy beak that's dark grey on top and white on bottom you really gotta just go back and forth between your field guide and your binoculars over and over until you decide something. Then you look at more birds and then go "wait, am i sure the thing i decided before was correct because this other bird looks similar but way longer neck and way smaller and...." SO. I was doing this. Over and over. And a guy carrying binoculars and a spotting scope on a tripod over his shoulder was walking past and so i holler out "Looking for birds?" and he says "Always!"
I talked with him for quite awhile and we compared notes: is the big thing a common loon (yes) is the small thing a murrelet (no) is that a grebe (its a red-throated loon) are those shorebirds black-bellied plovers (yes and also the ones that are hanging out with them but are half the size are dunlin). He was clearly gay. Also apparently he drove even farther than I did (from Tacoma). It was funny because it was a moment where I was like "oh...I'm part of a ~type~." Which makes sense because there was a lesbian who I rain into on the Oregon coast when I was birding there. Queer birders in the PNW who will get up early and drive hours to see a bird is apparently a thing.
On the way home the road was winding along beside the sound and I kept having to tell myself to keep my eyes on the road because I'd spot a cormorant or a kingfisher or a bald eagle or a duck. Finally I pulled aside at Potlatch state park to give myself a chance to just look a little bit more before I went home. I look out and there are five Killdeer (a bird I've been told are everywhere but had never seen) right on the lawn. Cool as hell. Also a double crested cormorant out on the water. We love to see it.
My life list is now at 77 species observed thanks to the six new species I saw today. I'm really looking forward to spring rolling around because there's gonna be a lot more stuff that I've never seen out and about, both migrating and in summer once our summer birds have returned. I haven't really gotten to see a full year's cycle yet, and last summer I was just barely starting to bird. How exciting!