Hello Tweeters:

Just wanted to report that Anne Winsky and I also easily found the GT
Grackle at the Wolf Kill feedlot in Stanwood, with a couple of other
unidentified birders, yesterday (the 13th). At Big Ditch thereafter, we had
one Snowy Owl, and four Virginia Rails (one seen three others heard) right
along the dike, refugees of tidal flooding....We missed on Gyr and Prairie
Falcon up on Samish Flats, but did have two pure Harlan's type Red-tails and
a Harlan's x Red-tail cross just north of the Skagit WMA headquarters along
Wylie Rd., among the usual impressive numbers of other raptors, swans, and
geese, and there were two BC Night-Herons at the usual spot along the Fir I
Rd near the Snow Goose Preserve.

Behavioral highlights: one of our two tundrius Peregrines, a 1st-year bird
at Jensen, evidently struck a small Canada Goose just before we arrived. As
the Canada wallowed about in its death throes, the Peregrine circled calmly,
a couple of minutes later landing to deliver the coup-de-grace, thereupon
beginning his meal...Quite a spectacle, albeit a macabre one. On a more
humerous note, we saw a Great Blue Heron give an apparent yawn at close
range (although going by in the car), something I don't often witness.

Scott Atkinson scottratkinson at hotmail.com




>From: "Jim McCoy" <jfmccoy at earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: jfmccoy at earthlink.net
>To: "'Tweeters'" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>Subject: falcon on Bayview-Edison road
>Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 21:27:20 -0800
>
>I saw what I took to be a first year Tundra peregrine (Sibley p. 133) on
>Bayview-Edison Road just north of Sullivan Road in the Samish flats, almost
>exactly where (I thought) an immature gyr was reported. For some reason I
>can't find this report; could whoever sent it reply to me offline? I'd
>like
>to compare notes and figure out whether or not we saw the same bird.
>
>A great day all around: great-tailed grackle, northern hawk owl, wild
>turkey (ten males just north of the aforementioned falcon spot and east on
>Samish Island Rd.), two imm. snowy owls (Big Ditch), a merlin, a brief
>visual on a Virginia rail (both also at Big Ditch), about five hundred
>trumpeter swans in three flocks (didn't find any tundras among them) and
>the always-enjoyable sight of thousands of snow geese at close range.
>
>Jim McCoy
>jfmccoy at earthlink.net
>Redmond, WA
>
>

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