Hey tweets, Sorry for the late posting, but my e-mail system has been off
line for days. And then when it came back on, I had only ***seven***
messages. What gives with all you tweets out there? Don't tell me you are
getting a life outside of birding? I know I'm not. For Christmas, my
husband and I drove down to Seaside, Oregon, birding all the way. To heck
with the relatives.

At the Julia Hansen WR along the Columbia, we saw a pair of WHITE-TAILED
KITES near the refuge office. Later we saw the same two birds playing the
ornithological equivalent of tag at 300-plus feet above the hills.
Gorgeous. Also at the refuge, a little flock of AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVERS,
and a perfectly gigantic flock (more than 400 birds) of miniature CANADA
GEESE, both ALEUTIAN and CACKLING. I've never seen so many teeny geese
before in all my life. They were grazing in the fields, flying here and
there, barking like a herd of toy schnauzers. Also near the refuge office
were two SCRUB JAYS.

In case you've never been there, the refuge is well worth a visit. There is
a ring road around the whole thing, and you can pull off almost anywhere to
scan the hills, sloughs, fields and hedges. The refuge is managed for
Columbia white-tailed deer, an endangered subspecies thought to have gone
extinct in the 1930s, until a remnant population was found here. The deer
seem to be thriving - we saw quite a few as we drove the ring road. Less
welcome were the giant-rodent nutrias that seem to have found a congenial
environment in the sloughs. Gah.

We arrived in Seaside around dusk and saw huge flocks of scoters (all three
kinds) fishing right outside our hotel room, along with western grebes,
common loons, harlequins, etc. The next morning, my husband donned his
wetsuit to surf 20-foot waves (HIS reason for the trip) while I headed out
to bird. In Cannon Beach, a few miles down the highway, I came upon a
hotspot park in town called James Madison Park. It's just a little
pocket-sized stretch of grass and trees, opposite a stand of what appears
to be old-growth evergreens (cedars, spruce and firs). Foraging in the
trees was a flock of TOWNSEND'S WARBLERS, mixed with a couple of TOWNSEND X
HERMIT WARBLERS, and two pure-looking HERMITS (an adult male and a juvenile
male, both with classic Hermit markings). They might have been hybrids, but
if they were, they must have been distant backcrosses. At this stage of
mixing, who can tell for sure? All I know is that the juvenile male had a
whitish throat, no facial striping (although he did have a dim earpatch),
and bright yellow face, a few little flecks along his sides, and an
olive-grayish sort of back.

Also present were numerous kinglets (both kinds), black-capped chickadees,
a red-breasted sapsucker, Steller's jays, Oregon juncos, golden-crowned and
white-crowned sparrows, and really really dinky crows. I'm not a Northwest
Crow believer, but these birds have almost convinced me that the split is a
valid one. They were scarcely larger than towhees.

Altogether we saw 61 species over one and a half days, in perfect weather.
The locals told us they had just survived 42 straight days of rain, missing
the all-time record by one day. So everyone was in a very cheerful mood.
What a great Christmas. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at mail.isomedia.com