Count me as a lurker in favor of keeping all the diversity of postings and
topics and, ah, interesting personalities that I have been enjoying on
tweeters for the past months. My morning wouldn't be the same without the
tweeters digest.

I don't post more often because I'm not a very skilled birder, and I'm
pretty sure that most Tweeters wouldn't find my postings worth much. I
live 300 miles from most of the list members, so I also assume that
there is less interest in what's going on on the Palouse than closer
locations.

Tweeters is passive (but educational) entertainment for me. Tweeters
posters and postings remind me of studying Zoology, drinking beer, and
periodically getting tear-gassed in Madison in 1970. The 'off-topic'
postings are informative and they tend to be some of the most passionate
postings. They have motivated me and given me specific information to
base letters to protest some of the idiotic things that our elected
representatives are doing for (to?) us. (As an Idahoan, this is a
thankless task. Our senior senator tends to send me a form letter that
begins: "While our views may differ on this issue...')

Now, for news on the highly unskilled birder front, my yard list grew this
weekend despite the almost total lack of (non-chickadee) birds at the
feeder, when a flock of 35 swans flew over. I could hear them coming for
several minutes before they finally showed up. About a third of them were
grey. Of course I didn't have my binoculars with me.

Other signs of approaching winter (besides the morning fog and nighttime
temps in the teens) are the rough-legged hawks which suddenly were numerous
on the Palouse this weekend; and when I was driving north out of
Moscow Saturday morning, a snowy owl on a roadside fencepost just a mile
from town.

Three of the rough-legs that I saw this weekend were perched with a
sizeable clump of long grass or straw in their talons, something I don't
recall seeing before. None appeared to have prey along with the grass. Did
I just happen to have seen birds that had picked up some grass along with
their vole entree, (or were they looking to improve their diet with fiber,
like my dog Tar does), or is there some other explanation for this?

...................................................................
Tom Besser
Phone: (509) 335-6075 Fax: 335-8529 e-mail: tbesser at vetmed.wsu.edu
Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory
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