I sent this yesterday but somehow it never made it to the list...
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Hi all--

I don't usually go chasing after rare birds, but thought I'd take a trip to try to see the Bean Goose. No luck, but I did have a great day today.
My Mom and Dad came along. (Dad went into Lana's for coffee and that was the end of his birding.)

Mom and I walked on the Sandpiper Trail. We saw a Merlin along the road, several groups of Canada Geese including some weird-looking hybrids and a couple of Snow Geese. We also saw Towhees, Wrens, Sparrows, and a beautiful doe lying down just a few feet off the trail within the loop at the end. All I had were a not-so-good pair of binoculars, so I was not able to identify the gulls or the sandpipers out on the mud flats.

We picked up Dad and went to the field at the end of K Street, saw a group of Canadas (two of them had orange neck bands), and that's about it.

We had lunch at Duffy's and then headed towards home. I persuaded them to do the Monte Brady Loop road with me. We saw the following:

Great Blue Heron at the top of a tall tree
A couple of hawks or falcons in a tree too far away to see well enough
Northern Harrier (I think--it was bluish-gray mottled with brown, white rump with grayish tail that was long and squared at the end)
Northern Flicker, Crows, Juncos, Sparrows
Red-Tailed Hawk
Trumpeter Swan (or Tundra?, but there was no yellow at all on the bill)

There was also a huge group of Swans and Canadas on the East side of the Loop (south of Hiram Hall Rd)

A white peacock of some kind in someone's yard (NE Corner of the Loop)

Bald Eagle
Western Meadowlark (a pair, plus maybe three others) next to the road on the north side of the Loop just before it returns to Hwy 12.


The Merlin and the Western Meadowlark were new Life Birds for me. I've been birding for about 7 years, but am not very good at identification yet. (If any of you would not mind a novice tagging along some time, please send me an email.)

Linda Adams
Puyallup, WA
LindaLuFrance (at) att (dot) net