Tweeters,

I drove from Yakima to Everett yesterday morning, picked up my sister and
brother-in-law who are beginning birders and then went to Stanwood in
search of the Tropical Kingbird. After a brief driving search of the area
south of the treatment ponds, I spotted two birders on the dyke who turned
out to be Gene Hunn and his wife. They were looking through their scope to
the southeast at the trees surrounding the first house south of the ponds on
the east side of the road. Gene hollered to me that they "had the bird".

We joined two other birders at the head of the driveway to the house and
soon spotted the kingbird, which shortly flew closer to the house and out of
view. After Gene found no one home in an attempt to get permission for us
to walk down the driveway to see the bird, I noticed the neighbor out in the
yard. He let us, nearly fifteen birders by then, walk on his property to
view the bird.

We were rewarded with many outstanding view of the Tropical Kingbird in the
next twenty minutes. It was quite spectacular.

Afterwards we stopped at the treatment plant, adding a few ducks and gulls,
including Mew Gulls, to our list.

We went out to Camano Island to a boat launch on the northwest corner of the
island. There we saw two Red-necked Grebes, many Western Grebes, many Surf
Scoters with a few White-winged mixed in, one Long-tailed Duck, ten Common
Goldeneye, one Harlequin Duck, two Pigeon Guillemots and one Belted
Kingfisher. My sister was keeping a list of the birds we were seeing as we
spotted them.

We were approached by a woman who lived a few doors down from the boat
launch. She asked up what we were doing. After hearing that we were
looking at birds, she said that the residents of the island are very
cautious about who comes onto the island. She told us a bunch of illegal
aliens had been arrested recently at the state park and deported. Then she
said, "With the Naval Station over there and seeing you writing things down,
I just couldn't be sure. A person just can't be too careful these days."
It took me a little while to figure out what she was talking about. Then,
it hit me. We were standing five miles away from the Naval Base and she
thought we were spying on the Navy. I told my sister to write down that I
could see a big building over there.

The kingfisher landed on the peak of a nearby house and my brother-in-law
started to get some video of it. I told him to be careful or the woman who
had just talked to us would be calling the sherrif. Luckily, the kingfisher
flew away before events turned nasty.

Denny Granstrand
Yakima, WA
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* Denny Granstrand *
* Yakima, WA *
* osprey at nwinfo.net *
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