Greetings Tweeters,

I am finally winding down from a pretty busy couple of weeks. Monday was
a great day of birding out in the Sequim/Port Angeles area with Richard
Rowlette. The only thing that I might add to the report was at least one
Eared Grebe at the John Wayne Marina.

Wednesday was a very frustrating day, chocked full of set backs and
delays. I had planed to leave my house before 12:00 noon, but was not
able to head towards the door until 3:00 PM. Once I got on the West
Seattle Freeway things went from bad to worse, as traffic was at a
complete stand still. At about 3:15 as I was coming down the east side of
the "high rise" I noticed a bird gliding around in circles about 150 to
200 feet above the ground over the intersection of the West Seattle
Freeway and Route 99. In the first nanosecond I thought "Large and pale
gray, must be a young gull." In the second nanosecond I noticed that this
gull had no neck and bill seemed to be missing. "That is no gull!" I said to
myself. Long pointed wings and long tail made it a large falcon.

As luck would have it, the only thing that seem to go right that day is
that the traffic came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. I grabbed my
spare pair of binoculars from under the seat and set them on the bird.

The bird continued soaring in circles above the road. The under side was
overall evenly streaked pale gray. There was no dark axillaries, ruling
out Prairie Falcon. When it banked, I could see that the dorsal side was
also a pale gray, though darker than the underside side. The head seemed
paler that the back and a faint mustached could be seen. I could not make
out the color of the cere, despite the good lighting conditions (the sun
was to my back). The lack of a black cap would rule out Peregrine Falcon.
I think the the bird was to pale of a gray to be a imm. Peregrine. This
leads me to the conclusion that it must be an adult Gyrfalcon.

It made several tight circles and the started flying off to the north.
When it began to flap its wings, I could make out better the heavy build
of this bird, very long tail, broad wings and, as Bud Anderson has pointed
out to me before, a very stocky "football" shape to the body.

I have no doubt that this was a Gyrfalcon and that it probably was an
adult based on the pale gray color. If the streaking on the breast is an
indicator of relative age, I would say that is was a fairly young bird
based on the amount of streaking on the breast.

My total observation time was about 2-3 minutes before traffic started
moving again.

This is the type of sighting that makes a bad day seem - not so bad.


On Thursday (2/15/96) I was driving to Olympia and stopped at Nisqually
NWR for a quick look around. The gates are closed to the refuge. However,
the fields to the west are completely flooded. Hundreds, if not thousands
of gulls were in plain view. The closest gull to me, and as a result, the
first bird that I looked at was the mock Ivory Gull that Dennis reported a
few weeks ago. What a neat bird. I looked for the Slaty-backed but could
not find it. Actually I only picked out Mew, Glaucous-winged, and (2)
Western Gulls. I did not have my scope with me (RATS!), so I probably
missed many birds. Next week I will make sure that it is in the car.

Lastly, this morning (2/16/96), I saw a Kestrel out of my "Big Window" in
front of
my computer. Not quite as tough to see in West Seattle as a Gyr, but I
take it. Actually, I'll take both birds - Thank you very much.

Russell

--------------------------------------------------------
Russell Rogers
4510 Glenn Way SW
Seattle, WA 98116
(206) 935-6280
rrogers at halcyon.com
--------------------------------------------------------