I dug through my Wild Phlox, NCW Audubon newsletter, disks and
found the following two items, the first is a Tufted Duck followup
which you may wish to page past. The second is a short piece on
why we bird first printed in Bird Watchers Digest.

From: Jerry Tangren, Wenatchee WA
<gsw$en at wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu>

This paragraph appeared in the April 1988 Wild Phlox and is by
Ron Friesz.

Several people reported the TUFTED DUCK and the two Eurasian Wigeons
that were in the mouth of the Methow River during mid-
March(NL,AF,SK,B&TJ,PMa). The most complete report came from Annie Filer:
"it was in the midst of a huge flock which included American coots,
buffleheads, gadwalls, American wigeon, greater scaups, common goldeneyes,
mallards, horned and pied-billed grebes, canvasbacks, ring-necked ducks,
and two Eurasian wigeon. One coot was all white except for a small amount
of gray flecking on its body, and a silver head!" Marcia Radke reported
another TUFTED DUCK on Migraine Lake(just south of Soda Lake on the
Columbia NWR); it was last seen on March 30th. I wonder if we are getting
an influx of tufted ducks or just better observers? The first tufted duck
for NCW was reported on the Columbia River near Orondo during the winter
of 1986.



Eight Reasons Why We Bird

1. It sharpens your sight. Before you know it, you learn to see the
ruby-crowned kinglet, to identify the ever-so-slight upswing in the bill
of the greater yellowlegs, and to spot the half-inch wide band on the
breast of the bank swallow as he twirls past you at 40 miles per hour.

2. It encourages you to explore the world. You ride out on
chartered fishing baots with fishermen who are wondering why anyone would
spend 30 bucks not to fish but to look for something called "shearwaters,"
which, when finally found after nine solid hours of looking, turn out to
be only some long-winged dark birds that skim across the waves and
disappear in a minute.

3. It gives you something to write about: "Dear Mom, How are you?
It snowed here the other day, but we still have two kingfishers down on
the pond. Against the white they seem especially beautiful..."

4. It makes you an authority in the neighborhood. People you have
never met will bring you robins and orioles their cat caught and ask,
"What's the wingspan of an eagle?"

5. It helps you to treasure a moment--that June evening, for example,
when you find on the branch of a fallen tree, his plumage dark and golden,
one eye closed and one eye watching you back, your first Chuck-will's-
widow.

6. It provides you with opportunities to meet someone like my
friend John Henry Hintermister--who keeps his life list locked in a
steel box in case of fire; who every spring, in the second week of March,
hikes the route Frank M. Chapman hiked in 1890 in search of the now-
possibly extinct Bachman's warbler. He comes home exhausted, ticks in his
hair, and says, "I'm only going to chase that !# at & bird for 15 more years.
If I don't see one by then, I'll give it up."

7. It will make you politically active. You will write intricately
argued, adrenalin-fueled letters to your congressman demanding that
something be done so people will stop littering, riding jeeps on beaches,
throwing rocks at gulls, building condominiums, driving airboats in the
Everglades, spraying insecticides, and swaing down trees.

8. Finally, it can save your life. One day you will be walking home
from work, depressed. Your kid has the flu; the car's clutch needs to be
fixed; and you are thinking tomorrow is your birthday. Another year has
passed, and once again you have not triumphed at anything, really. Then
you glance at the sky in despair, and right there, right over your head,
blessing that particular air space on your street forever, is the world's
most beautiful bird! With pearly white head, black and white wings, long
forked tail, it circles slowly, a hundred feet up, eating dragonflies,
tearing off the wings and letting them flutter down--while you toss your
briefcase in a bush, grab the first person to come along, and shout, "A
swallow-tailed kite! A swallow-tailed kite!" until he, too, looks up and
blinks at the sight and knows suddenly that he must buy some binoculars
and become a bird watcher himself.(Jack Conner, Bird Watcher's Digest,
July/August 1984)