Hey tweets, My husband and I find ourselves without kids in the house for
the first time in 19 years, as my youngest son went off to college this
week. To celebrate, we want to spend this Saturday and Sunday birding. We
can leave Seattle at 4 a.m. but must return no later than 7 p.m. Sunday
night.

Can any of you out there in tweeterland suggest the best one-night, two-day
trip? I'd like to find a hot spot for migrants, but I don't care if they're
migrant shorebirds or migrant songbirds. But a nice spot for late summer
residents would also be good.

We do have a number of Washington birds that we've never seen:
sharp-tailed sandpiper
ruff
black-backed woodpecker
sharp-tailed grouse
pine grosbeak
Bohemian waxwing (how can one bird for as many years as we have without this?)
spotted owl

Okay, so I know some of these birds are in my dreams, but that's the point
of this weekend. One can always dream, can't one?

I remember taking a migration class at Cape May one year. To get myself
ready for seeing a slew of life birds, I made a list of all the birds that
occur in New Jersey. On the last day of the class, the teacher asked us
which target birds had been missed. When it was my turn, I read down my
list. I had a number of misses (as one might expect). Everyone listened
respectfully until I came to the rails. "Corn crake," I read. People sat
stunned for a few seconds, then the guffaws started. I swear some people
even had tears running down their faces. It turns out that only one corn
crake had ever been spotted in New Jersey, and it had been dead. People
thought it had been a plant or something. At least that's what they said.

So I suppose wanting the equivalent of a corn crake on this dream-journey
is asking too much. But still.... - Connie, Seattle

csidles at mail.isomedia.com