hello tweets.

and so i returned to ebey/fir/sammish islands and also peeked
at padilla bay today. did i say it was cold yesterday? well,
i think it was colder today, and the weather was even more
impressively awful, especially that fierce (but fortunately
brief) hail storm.

i noticed that there were far fewer bald eagles today than there
were last thursday, when i last visited this area, although i
can't give you any real numbers since i stopped counting eagles
(last thursday) after i saw ten of them. today, i didn't see
ten in total. as expected, i saw lots of green-winged teal,
mallard, shovelers, and swans. i also saw groups of brant,
numbering between 20-150 each, on padilla bay and riding the
waves off sammish island. there was a large number of
white-crowned sparrows (probably pugetensis) in a sizeable
blackberry bramble on the side of the road next to the snohomish
river. i estimated this group to have about 50 individuals, but
there could have been more since the longer i looked, the more
birds i saw. i also managed to see two merganser species today,
and we -- my birding buddy and i -- were almost run into by a
sharp-shinned hawk that was diving across the road.

we stopped at the la conner brewery so we could indulge in
another one of our hobbies: beer tasting. the beer was really
good, although the food was only average, in my opinion. while
we were there, we spoke with a local duck hunter for awhile about
birds and about the differences of opinion between hunters and
birders about resource management.

on the way home, i saw one "peep," i guess, standing near the
highway in a flooded field. it was greyish with a strikingly
white belly, medium-length beak and legs. it reminded me of a
solitary sandpiper in winter plumage, but i am not sure what it
was. any guesses?

we saw 48 species today. my bird list follows, for those
who might be interested;

common loon, winter and breeding plumaged birds, along with
one that was half-way between plumages
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
tundra swan
trumpeter swan
canada geese
brant, probably three hundred total in several locations
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
american wigeon
northern pintail
nothern shoveler
ring-necked duck
white-winged scoter
surf scoter
harlequin duck
barrow's goldeneye
common goldeneye
bufflehead
common merganser
red-breasted merganser
american coot
killdeer
white-bellied peep with medium-long beak (1)
ring-billed gull
mew gull
glaucous-winged gull
western gull
bald eagle
northern harrier
sharp-shinned hawk
red-tailed hawk
rock dove
northern (red-shafted) flicker
violet-green swallow
tree swallow
american crow
bushtit
black-capped chickadee
american robin
european starling
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
red-winged blackbird
brewer's blackbird
house (english) sparrow

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~nyneve/
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