Tweets, Sunday I took my friend Keith Messer out to get him some life birds.
Not comfortable with some shorebirds alone, and needing help finding spots I
went along for the joy of shorebirding, and so on... We ended up getting him 4
lifers, and one state bird seen. At chehalis Refuge we got three V. RAIL
sticking their heads out at us, one walking across the mud and back. At Damon
point(the ponds are ruined at high tide now, where have all the shorebirds
gone? Long time passing---)Actually we did find some at Ocean shores just not
the pond, it was terribly flooded, and shorebirds kept trying to find a spot,
pitiful......Any way we found a very pale plumaged Thayers gull, oddplace but
injured. We had our gull book. Then after hitting a few other spots we went
on to Bottle Beach. In A pasture along the way we had ONE GREATER YELLOWLEGS,
TWO LESSER YELLOWLEGS, AND ONE KILLDEER feeding next to the LESSER
YELLOWLEGS,got great looks. The LESSER IS ANOTHER OF THE LIFE BIRDS ALONG WITH
THE THAYERS. While driving through an area heavily wooded on both sides, a
NORTHEN GOSHAWK flew in a stoop at an angle right in front of our car. I was
able to get the best and most detailed look at the underbelly for the
first time; although I've seen this species several times now, never this
close!!!This was my highlight... At Bottle Beach the tide was going out, but
with a little effort we tracked down both AMERICAN AND PACIFIC GOLDEN PLOVERS,
the last two lifers for the day. As we were just enjoying the setting sun; I
watched a winter plumaged Golden plover feed, then stop and
he started staring at the giant wormlike things the whimbrel was pulling up!
He watched a bit longer and took a couple of steps toward the gorging bird.
The whimbrel noticed, and merely stepped into deeper water.
You could almost see the poor plovers thoughts, and then I began to notice his
color change from Golden, almost To GREEN WITH ENVY. He was even wagging his
tail as if he were a puppy begging for food(I know they all do that but lets
pretend its a first... Okay???? It was such a humorous interaction between
the two very different birds. Of course they both moved on to their assigned
positions in life as we all do after a moment of envy(boy I wish I had a LIFE
LIST AS LONG AS HIS LIST!). We had a total of 95 species for the
day.......Vicki Biltz
sawwhet85b at netscape.net Bonney Lake Wa.


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