Hello Tweetes,
I got contacted on 1-26 by a birder who lives in Olympia to check this
verry different and strikinly gorgeous Red-winged Blackbird out.
It took all this time to finaly found this bird. This is the most flashy
Blackbird i ever encountered..He got the tail looking as of the
Chestnut-collared Longspur.The head is all black to the middle of the
chest.It makes a bib what than is kind of orange color where the sides have
black streaking.The wings are red yellow and a smal stripe of white.Looking
from the bottom,it is mostly all white to the end of the tail,without the
smal pattern on the tail what is black.He stays with the Red-winged
Blackbirds who breed in this marsh in East-Bay.His call is also as of the
Blackbirds around him.When he flies the part of red in the wings are huge
,and with the long white tail it's certainly a verry showy Blackbird.

I also spend the rest of the afternoon at the Black-Lake Meadows running
in to some birders what trying to check this place out and photographing
the Virginia Rails.

Ruth Sullivan
Tacoma
godwit at worldnet.att.net