Hi Tweets,

Friday morning at daybreak Barb and I made the Edmonds Ferry with five
minutes to spare, in spite of a long wait for coffee with would-be early
Christmas shoppers. At Point No-Point we found cold wind, rough water, a
half dozen Red-necked Grebes, Surf Scoters, White-winged Scoters,
Bufflehead, and assorted gulls including Bonaparte?s. A Great Blue Heron
refused to come down out of his tree to hunt in the marsh by the
lighthouse, but House Finches and Golden-crowned Sparrows came out to
watch us as we gawked at a Bald Eagle gliding over the marsh. We headed
for The Nature Conservancy site at Foulweather Bluff next, but after
trying all the roads we weren?t able to locate it, the first of several
set-backs for the day. Perhaps the sign has been removed.

So we headed for the Hood Canal Bridge and at the park there found
Red-breasted Mergansers, Horned and Western Grebes, Common Loon, Pigeon
Guillemot. From Gardiner to Diamond Point we had cold wind and found
mainly ducks hunkered down in sheltered ponds and inlets: smallish
groups of Hooded Mergansers, Mallards, American Widgeon, Northern
Pintail, Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, a few coots and a Green-winged
Teal. In the forest by the water we saw assorted kinglets, chickadees
and sparrows. Sequim Bay was calm and we had a sandwich at a picnic
table at the John Wayne Marina with a group of six beautiful Long-tailed
Ducks, Harlequins, and a kingfisher. We scoped out a Pacific Loon and a
couple of Marbled Murrelets far out in the bay.

We criss-crossed the area north of Sequim looking for large falcons, and
passing the game farm we briefly watched a buffalo that appeared to be
sucking the windshield of a car filled with satisfied patrons.
Interesting. In the next ninety minutes we found several Red-tailed
Hawks and Bald Eagles and some ducks in the potholes, but no gyr and no
peregrines. Mildly depressed we headed for Port Angeles, revived with
excellent coffee from a yellow kiosk on Lincoln Avenue and headed for
Lincoln Park to find the Emperor Goose. Alas, only Mallards and
grotesque-looking mutant ducks in a depressing pond behind a berm in the
southeast part of the park, with an islet covered with scrubby brush.
Not an Emperor Goose in sight. We drove past the airport, and returning
finally spotted a flock of about fifty Canada Geese through the trees on
the north side of Lincoln Park, but alas! without the Emperor Goose. In
the failing light we headed for Ediz Hook and found a local birder
looking at a small flock of Dunlin, Sanderlings, Black Turnstones, and a
Black-bellied Plover. He told us the Emperor Goose hadn?t been
consorting with the other geese, but rather with the mutant ducks,
hiding out mostly in the brush on the islet. We admitted to ourselves
that we wouldn?t be able to see it in the gloom, so we headed home with
a tally of 56 species for a trip on which we would have been satisfied
with just a goose and two large falcons.

Paul Webster
PWebst25 at Concentric.net