Hola tweeters,
After a great day of birding myself and four
friends decided to brave the hoards of owls and
harriers flying around the Fish and Game area at the
intersection of the East and West 90, and walk out to
the dike. The Gyr Falcon was practicing
kleptoparasitism, stealing rodents from Harriers and
Short-eared Owls, catching them in mid air and
returning to its same perch in the middle of the field
to chow them down.
Anyway, as we walked out to the dike we stumbled
upon an adult male harrier about forty feet away from
us scarfing a Microtus species. We had two scopes and
the lighting was perfect. I had never seen the color
of the cere that well before. It was a beautiful
olivey yellow, half concealed by rictal bristles. It
ate for about firteen minutes and was about to cough
up a pellet for us when a Short-eared Owl spooked it
up. It was awesome.
So we continued down the trail, and spooked two
sparrows that flew into the short grass stubble. They
were a little more wary than I'm used to for Savannah
Sparrows, and it was hard for us to pull it all
together. We had to piece together the streaked
flanks on a perfectly white bakground, and the white
central crown stripe, the white throat, bordered by
heavy malar strip which was wider at the bottom. Buffy
above the eye. Also, the shape of the head, as the
bill appears more of an extension from the crown,
rather than a protrusion from further down the face as
say the more conical bill of a Lincoln's Sparrow.
Anyway, my friend Casey Richart and I had been
talking about whether or not SVSPs wintered here, and
I thought that I could remember seeing them at
Bowerman, and around Rochester year round. The Sibley
guide seems to portray that they are not here during
the winter months, but Nat. Geographic has a thin
green stripe extending up into Washington. Anyway,
we pasted all of the pieces together of the bird that
we saw and believe strongly that the both were
Savannah Sparrows. What are other people's
experiences with this species in WA??

Lummi Shore Dr.
Pigeon Guillemot, Red-necked Grebe, Long-tailed Duck

The day ended with two Barn Owls flying around the
parking lot, one with a vole in its talons. What a
beautiful place we live in.

Drew Wheelan
awheelan at hermaninstitute.org

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