Gary Wiles and I had ANCIENT MURRELETS at two locations this afternoon.
First had 15 birds in about three seperate groups at the Brown Point
Lighthouse in Tacoma. Also there were 3+ (hard to count) Marbled Murrelets
popping up and down in various parts of the bay. This was about 12:15-1:45
PM.

Then headed to Dash Point pier where we saw at least 5 Ancient Murrelets.
Saw none in a brief stop at the Dash Point overlook.

ALSO we dipped on the TROPICAL KINGBIRD reported from Keyes RD near Elma.
We looked from about 8:30-10:30 AM.

Yesterday 11/25 I went to Ridgefield for the Ferruginous Hawks and found
none. I saw an interesting Red-Tailed Hawk which had me going for a second,
I saw later that Ruth and Patrick saw this same bird...bright white chest
and streaking very low on the belly. Had one light-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK,
and 5 SANDHILL CRANES. ALSO heard a loud RED-SHOULDERED HAWK calling from
near the hunter check-in station area. Saw one possible "HARLAN'S" race of
Red-Tail, but I didn't call it since there were SO many variations on
Red-Tails present! I lazily counted 18 Red-Tails...I see the Sullivan's had
a more realistic number. I can't stress enough how amazing it is to see the
HUGE number of raptors at Ridgefield right now!! The Harriers probably
outnumbered the Red-Tails 2:1!!! Gary and I were wondering what the food
supply must look like down there, why doesn't Nisqually NWR host that many
raptors? Amazing stuff.

Jason Paulios
JPaulios at hotmail.com
Olympia, WA



_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus