Dear Tweeters,

Perhaps the shorebirds reported by Valerie Shahan were snipe. I flushed two of them today while looking for the Great Egret at mile 76.2, just east of Hamilton, Skagit County. The egret was not there then (around eleven in the morning), but later in the day it was.

Meanwhile, I had an unsuccessful trip for pygmy owls on the logging roads above Grandy Creek (south and west of Baker Lake). Sometimes they show up, other times they don't. October is usually a good time to look for this species in the low mountains of the upper Skagit Valley, though. They can sometimes be found right at the edge of the hills, just above the flat valley bottom itself.

One interesting sighting I had up there while calling for owls was a flock of six White-crowned Sparrows, apparently gravelling on a logging road. Two were immatures, and four were adults. This species starts getting uncommon in the upper valley once breeding season ends. Today's birds looked "different" to me. I did notice that one had an orange-ish bill. The trouble is, I never can remember how to tell the different races apart. Even so, these birds looked different to me from the breeders of summer, and I wondered whether they might be migrants from farther north.

Good birding!




Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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