Tweets -

While this isn't earthshattering news, I finally added a long-expected
bird to my yard list. A few minutes ago, a COMMON RAVEN flew over my
house in Kirkland, King Co. I had heard they nested at Bridle Trails
State Park this year - that's less than a mile from my house - but I'd
never seen one here (or there) before.

The bird *looked* like a raven (large, and with a very nice wedge-shaped
tail), but just for kicks, a croaked at it in what I thought was a really
poor imitation of a raven. Well, the raven must have heard me because it
suddenly wheeled around and croaked back. It ended up doing about 2
complete circles above my house croaking before giving up and continuing
on its way.

Now all I need is for one to show up at Marymoor, where we still have
never seen one.

On another note, on Sunday my son and I hiked up to Gothic Basin, which is
accessed from Barlow Pass on the Mountain Loop Highway east of Granite
Falls, Snohomish County. Barlow Pass is also the start of the trail up to
Monte Cristo. Gothic Basin is a fairly high elevation (5000 ft) basin
within the peaks up there, with a deep blue lake and a few small pools.
Five years ago, we saw ptarmigan up there, and that was what we were
looking for Sunday.

We did not find any ptarmigan, though we heard what I believe was a
ptarmigan call, and we saw what I think was ptarmigan scat.

We did get a consolation bird, though. About 1 mile up the trail, a
NORTHEN PYGMY-OWL was hooting at around 11:00 a.m. It came it when I
hooted back, and flew from tree to tree trying to figure out where I was
while a couple of HERMIT THRUSH harrassed it.

Another odd thing was finding GRAY JAY at the *bottom* of the trail and an
AMERICAN DIPPER at the *highest* moving water in Gothic Basin. Weird.

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