Tweets - I got up late, but still decided to head up into the Skagit for a
short day's birding.

On Maupin Road, I had 10 (exact count) SNOW BUNTING, just east of the Jenson
Access turnoff on a freshly plowed field. Also in the area were a dozen or
more AMERICAN PIPIT.

At the Fir Island Farms / Hansen access there were about 1000 SNOW GEESE, a
GREATER YELLOWLEGS, a WILSON'S SNIPE, and a handful of swans.

At the Game Range, while searching for sparrows along the edges of the corn
fields, I glanced up to find an ORANGE BISHOP (Euplectes franciscanus) adult
in breeding plumage, perched atop a corn stalk. It stayed there for about 5
seconds, while I thought to myself "It looks like an Orange Bishop - did it
escape or did someone set it free?" It is certainly not "countable", but a
stunning sight in a natural habitat none-the-less. After 5 seconds it
disappeared, not to be seen again.

Also at the Game Range were a PEREGRINE FALCON, and (I think) a dark-morph
ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. Just east of the range were some facinating Red-tailed
Hawks of various color morphs, apparently fighting over carcasses of ducks
and/or pheasant killed by hunters. One or two matched the "intermediate
adult" plumage shown in Sibley - beautiful birds.

At the Big Ditch, looking far to the northwest, there was a huge flock of
shorebirds (10,000+, probably Dunlin, though it was _way_ to far to be
sure). Without binoculars, they looked like the distant clouds, but through
my 10x B&Ls, you could see the continuously changing shape of the cloud as
it stretched and compressed, split and recombined. Occasionally, an edge
would suddenly turn white/silver as they caught the light, and the white
would spread then disappear. They seemed intent on landing in the bay way
to the north, but either hunters or raptors were constantly setting them
back to the air. An awesome sight.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http//www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== hummer at isomedia.com