Tweeters,

The Hairy Woodpecker today kept me company in a Bald Eagle nesting
grove along Totten Inlet (west of Olympia). I don't see Hairy
Woodpeckers often so it was good to see it and it was very close,
having flushed from a few feet away and landed for good viewing
some 15 feet away.

Thanks to Patrick Sullivan for posting about Greater White-fronted
Geese at the old Flett dairy. I have been wanting to get up there
to check out the Oregon White Oaks and the wetlands and today I
finally made it. I saw what were probably the same 9 white-fronts.
Something flushed them, along with about 80 Canada Geese and I got
to here the vocalizations of both at the same time. I did not access
the area from the north the way Patrick and Ruth did (I need to get
back up there and explore some more). I came in on the south margin
of the wetland where a survey crew had taken down some fence, allowing
me to drive right in beside a nice long strip of oak trees (across from
Clover Park Technical Institute. There are some huge fir stumps on the
slope above the wetland here, amazing to see signs of a one-time ancient
forest in an area now so urbanized (in fact, when I got home the news
described two people shot in the head in the area...good grief, Lakewood...).

Good bunch of bushtits in the tangle of deciduous growth and blackberry
near the wetland. Kinglets too. Mallards, Ring-necked Ducks, Shovelers,
Coots, and Green-winged Teal were on the pond. Next trip I want to find
the meadowlarks.

Kelly McAllister