I had my doubts about Ruth Sullivan's and other's occasional
reports of ROUGH LEGGED HAWKs out here. I have tried to find one
for years. There's been many a bird that looked like a RL when
perched, with a lighter top half of breast and all, but then
when flushed they would turn out to have red tails. This morning
there was a fierce east wind as I was walking back from checking
out the erosion problem, and this ROUGH LEGGED came slowly
plodding upwind right in front of me. Dark wrists, dark tail
band, light upper half, long wings, plain as day 30 yards away.
I was surprised how small their heads appear relative to a RT.

Then I thought I saw another RL perched in a snag out along
highway 109 near the Humptulips bridge, but this was a 60 mph
id.

Also saw peregrines, harriers, and a coopers today.

Now if I could just find a Northern Shrike that everyone but me
is seeing.

The Damon Pt. road is closed again at the outhouses. The culvert
site draining the duck pond took a beating this week. It looks
like the south wind Wednesday night got under and around the west
end of the plastic hex rip rap on the south side of the road,
then the wind shifted around through west to NW Thursday morning
and beat up the north side of the road. There's still a lane
through the middle but with both sides caving, Parks must have
decided they couldn't take a chance of cars falling over the edge
and the sign of the gate says closed "indefinitely".

Paul Huffman
Ocean Shores, WA