Hi Tweeters,

It's been an exciting week or two. Hubby got his slr camera (a Pentax)
with two lenses, one a 100-300mm and a doubler. And I got my spotting
scope, a Celestron 60mm zoom. My question is now, how do you pack all this
stuff? Yesterday evening was finally clear enough to go play for a bit, so
we headed out by the Centralia Steam plant and Pacificorp Coal Mine (Big
Hanaford Rd., pg. 46 in DeLorme, north of Centralia a little bit.) There's
a pond (maybe just a big puddle in the winter months) right before the steam
plant with birds on it just out of my binocular range. Heehee, can see them
now. It was a mixed bunch, a few buffleheads, male and females,
green-winged teals, American wigeons with a few Eurasian Wigeons thrown in,
a few scaup (haven't learned to tell them apart yet), and a few pair of
Northern shovelers. There were several killdeers running around, and also
small black and white birds skimming the water that we couldn't id. Then a
red-shafted flicker sat down in a tree beside us for a bit. I got 4 life
birds for this little jaunt (isn't it nice to be new). The other sediment
ponds after the steam plant didn't produce many birds this time, except
40-50 coots, 3 bufflehead males and 6 females, a few Canadians and Northern
shovelers. If you go on down to where the road y's and veer right, there is
a farm pond that sometimes has a pair of mute swans and other domestic birds
with a few wild visitors thrown on. This area is usually rich in deer, an
elk migration route, pheasant and quail release site, and I usually spot
several raptors. A farmer stopped and told us there were several bald
eagles in the area.
My hummers haven't made an appearance yet, but my friend over on Coal
Creek has had a few come in. The bald eagle is back, at least one of them,
it flew right over the house the other morning, circled the field a few
times and went to sit in a tree on the creek for a good hour. We finally
went down the road to see if we could get a better look, but our two
visiting Canadians (I'm ready to wring their necks) tattled on me as usual
and he went off.

Mary