We spent a good part of the day birding the Samish and Skagit and
Stillaguamish flats, without anything particularly rare to report, but there
were spectacular numbers of big white birds with and without black wingtips
and big brown birds with white heads and tails (also variants that were all
brown or with mostly white underparts). A single very lovely Snowy Owl was
preening up a storm in mid afternoon just off the end of the road out to the
Layton Farm access (I think that's the name - the new access point off Fir
Island Rd., west of Conway). Probably everyone who wanted to see a SNOW has
already seen one this winter, but I know the recordkeepers would like us to
continue to report such birds to the end of their stay.

With the proliferation of records of "Eurasian" Green-winged Teal lately, we
scanned flock after flock of Green-wings to find one of our own but failed
miserably. I was also surprised at how few Eurasian Wigeon we found in a
number of large flocks of American Wigeon. Maybe I just don't have the
Eurasian touch.

Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115