Subject: Birding doldrums
Date: Jul 16 14:43:43 2002
From: Cliff Drake - cliff at cliffdrake.net


At 02:04 PM 7/16/2002 -0700, ian paulsen wrote:
>HI ALL:
> Right now we are in the summer birding doldrums. So what do you do to
>pass the time until fall migration really gets going??


I go down to the locks and look at the salmon, I'll bet I saw 5000 sockeye
this morning and about 6 HUGE Chinook. Everywhere you look there are huge
schools of sockeye swimming around and jumping out of the water. The count
through the fish ladder is about 250,000 sockeye, and that doesn't count
the number who go through the locks and this isn't a big year.

Bird-wise, the GB Herons are fledging, you can see them on the lawns, the
fences, the trees, Flattop, the resident male Belted Kingfisher has at
least one fledgling, there were 4 there this morning. A Bald Eagle was
sitting in the roost tree, an occasional Osprey or Caspian Tern flies by,
the usual tweety birds are around, Song Sparrows, Bewick's Wrens, Robins,
etc. It's a pleasant place, in spite of the estimated nine billion tour
busses a day.

Cliff Drake
Seattle WA
cliff at cliffdrake.net