Tweeters,

Jason Paulios and I birded the Stanwood area today and had several
sightings of interest.

GYRFALCON - 1 dark morph bird seen at the far west end of Boe Road (listed
as 236th Street NW in DeLorme), which is about 2 miles south of Stanwood.
It perched repeatedly on the ground in the large open short-grass field
south of the road, and made several passes at Mallards in a nearby ditch
and at the large flock of several thousand Snow Geese in the adjacent
plowed field. The bird was similar in size to two Rough-legged Hawks and
two Common Ravens that were also present.

ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK - 2 birds seen in the same field mentioned above. They
also stood repeatedly on the ground.

LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER - 15 birds seen at the Stanwood sewage treatment
pond, identified by their calls. Of greatest interest was a group of 9
birds swimming (!) among the ducks in the pond. They were definitely
moving along in open water and were not simply walking on a deeper section
of the pond bottom. Neither of us have ever heard of shorebirds swimming,
except for phalaropes of course.

TROPICAL KINGBIRD - 1 bird seen in the morning from 7:30-8:00 a.m. at the
same house on Legue Road that was reported in Pam Pritzl's message
yesterday. It spent most of the time perched high in the low trees along
the north side of the house, and then finally flew out to the chainlink
fence along the road, where it was last seen. It was again quite
cooperative, giving us long and close-up looks and calling several times.
We saw it both flycatching and eating several blackberries. Donna Kish,
the owner of the house, was very kind in letting us explore her property.


NORTHERN SHRIKE - 1 bird was perched on a telephone line along Thomle Road
1 mile south of town.

CATTLE EGRET - not seen today in the vicinity of Thomle Road, where it had
been reported over the weekend.

Gary Wiles
Tumwater, WA
wilesharkey at yahoo.com


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