THANK YOU; It was a pleasure and treat to have you and friend
visit our Wildlife Sanctuary , I saw two eagles Friday they are
because we have a lot of fish running now, THANKS again ;;isn't
this a BEAUTIFUL WORLD;;;
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> From: Janet Carroll <jrc at pop.seanet.com>
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: Portage Wildlife Sanctuary and other spots in Snohomish Co.
> Date: Tuesday, November 11, 1997 5:45 PM
>
> Hi Tweeters
>
> Spent part of the day birding at the Portage Wildlife Sanctuary, Boe
> Road in the Stillaguamish floodplain, and Tulalip Bay. Hadn't been to
> Portage before but was very happy to find another interesting natural
> area to bird in Snohomish County. Portage Creek is a tributary to the
> Stillaguamish River, and the sanctuary is along the Stilly floodplain.
> We visited with the resident caretaker, Gene Ammon, who is a full time
> employee of Snohomish County Parks. A good portion of the sanctuary was
> floodplain farmland with drainageways and streams running through the
> area interspersed with some shrubs and wetlands. The fields are
> bordered to the south by a small forest and shrubs and a pond. The
> santuary lies at the base of a steep bluff. Of course, Portage Creek
> runs through the sanctuary.
>
> Another observer recently reported a rough-legged hawk there, and we saw
> the hawk as well. It was an interesting sighting for us as we usually
> see the light phase, and this was a beautiful dark phase bird. On the
> floodplain fields we saw five western meadowlarks, two common snipes, an
> American kestrel, northern harrier, red-tailed hawk, marsh wren,
> killdeer, crows, and great blue heron. The shrubs offered some inviting
> squeaks, but the best we could find were song sparrows. I have a
> feeling that those of you who are good at finding winter sparrows would
> have some good luck here. There were two pied-billed grebes and several
> mallards in the pond and black-capped chickadees, ruby-crowned kinglets,
> robins, dark-eyed juncos, five common flickers, spotted towhees,
> Stellar's jay, and red-winged blackbirds in the trees and shrubs around
> the sanctuary. We also saw a coho salmon in the creek. We had a very
> pleasant stay.
>
> >From Portage Creek we headed to the Boe Road and saw an estimated 4000
> snow geese. In addition to the geese, there were lots of blackbirds, a
> great blue heron, and four bald eagles.
>
> We headed back to Everett intending to stop for a few minutes at Kayak
> Point County Park, but found that you now have to pay $3.00 to enter and
> since we planned only a short visit decided to keep going. We stopped
> at several areas along Tulalip Bay - saw common loon, surf scoters,
> western and horned grebes, sea lions, cormorants, bufflehead, belted
> kingfisher, and we watched a adult bald eagle carry a western grebe to a
> piling and eat it. We didn't see the kill, but saw the eagle plucking
> the bird and then with the grebe's head and neck hanging down the side
> of the piling we watched the eagle tear into the grebe with another
> adult eagle watching on a nearby piling. We left before the eagle
> finished the grebe, but doubt there was going to be anything left for
> the other eagle.
>
> There are lots of nets in the bay to catch the returning salmon. Have
> had some bad experiences with the gillnets in the Snohomish River
> estuary area catching diving birds, including loons, grebes, and
> cormorants, in addition to salmon.
>
> But - it was a good day!
>
> Janet
> --
> Janet Carroll
> Everett WA
> jrc at jrc.seanet.com
> --------------------------------------------------------
> "The frog never drinks up the pond in which it lives."
> --------------------------------------------------------