A group of our class went on a birding trip to the Samish flats on
Sunday, Feb. 2nd. It was mostly sunny and here are the birds that we saw,
This was a five year record for these trips, 168 total raptors and 10
species of raptors.

We saw
28 adult BAEA's,
25 sub-adult BAEA'S,
15 unidentified BAEA'S,

7 adult RTHA'S,
10 immature RTHA'S,
22 unidentified RTHA'S,

1 adult RLHA,
13 immature RLHA'S,
2 unidentified RLHA'S,

8 unidentified buteo's,

17 female NOHA'S,
2 immature NOHA'S,
3 unidentified NOHA'S,

1 PEFA, (large adult, took off and stooped a gull?)
2 PRFA'S, (close view with the scope atop a pole)
1 GYFA, (from a distance, one car saw it up close along the road)
2 unidentified falcons, (one fir island, one samish flats)

31 GBHE's, (beautifully prehistoric-like)

7 SNOW (5 in the same field off Allen rd. on Samish),
1 WSOW, near the school at 6:30am
1 SEOW. (irratic wingbeats over the dike)

A safe and fun trip for us all. Thank you birds.

My favorite part of the trip was watching the GYFA fly off and how
interesting it was watching it fly through a scope. Classic low
tail-chase flight.
Sincerly,
Philip (Dean's Class)

My favorite spot was the place where we saw the five snowy owls. They
were all sort of stages of the owls; female, male, and immature colors.
Amanda

I liked it when we saw the five snowy owls. There were so many and you
could see them with your naked eye. That's about it.
KURT

My best spot was when we saw the prairie falcon and the gyrfalcon. We
could see the prairie falcon close up in the scope, and the naked eye. At
the same time the gyr was in the field behind us. It was fun when we saw
the prairie falcon up close later.
Dara

We saw the five snowy owls. I especially liked it because I have never
seen so many in the same field.
Brittney

The gyrfalcon that was sitting on top of a pole on the samish. It was so
close that we could see the streaking on its breast telling us it was an
immature. The cere and eye-ring were also bluish.
Dakota.




Dear Tweeters: Tuesday Feb. 4th 1:15pm
Today we saw an amazing spectical in our school creek. There was a full
grown male SSHA in the creek on a deciduous tree. It flew on a hunting
flight to one of our feeders and missed a little bird. After that it
flew from perch to perch in the area so we thought that it had dropped
its prey. It turns out it didn't, but we checked later. Then the SSHA flew
into a large cedar tree. He didn't come out and a BCCH flew from
the edge of the creek and was within two feet of a branch when the SSHA
shot out of the cedar, hit the bird, turned around in the air, and kept
on flying till it was out of sight, without ever landing. Truly amazing.

This happened around 1:15 after our lunch. Our teacher saw the bird on a
branch and we all walked, very slowly, down to the creek and watched this
for 20 minutes. The hawk seemed to not notice us all during this time. Wow!
-tyson