Birders,

I'll be visiting Seattle with 3 non-birding relatives from 6-9 December.
Although we'll be staying downtown on the water doing mostly
tourist things, I'm hoping to have at least a morning to do some birding,
since this will be my first trip to the Pacific Northwest. I've done a
bit of web research on the area and have a few questions.

1. It seems from the CBC data that the crows in the immediate Seattle
area are considered American Crows. Is this true? Where is the closest
place to get reliable Northwestern Crows (if such a thing exists!)?

2. There are several ferries offered from the Seattle area. Can you
recommend any ferry routes in particular for birding/whaling in early
December. For example, is the Seattle-Bainbridge or the Seattle-Vashon
ferry good?

3. Any other advice for locating the following target birds?
-- Yellow-billed Loon
-- Arctic Loon
-- Trumpeter Swan
-- Rock Sandpiper
-- Mew Gull (it looks like this will be easy, right?)
-- Northwestern Crow

Many thanks in advance!

Jeff

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Jeffrey Pippen jspippen at duke.edu
Biology Dept. Box 90338
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 PH: (919) 660-7278
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