Subject: [Tweeters] up close with an ouzel
Date: Nov 2 16:55:54 2004
From: Rob Sandelin - floriferous at msn.com


Spent a rainy day at the Wallace River Hatchery on US2 as part of a training
for my students to be Salmon Docents next week. While the intelligent people
were indoors enjoying a brief lunch, warm and dry, I was out on the creek
watching coho salmon thrash around. An ouzel stopped in, then perched on the
concrete fish area I where I standing. After picking up a half dozen of the
salmon eggs laying about he launched into his delightful burbling song.
Then he bopped over to my feet where I had sloppily dropped some apple bits
and poked around at them, right at my feet. Then, he burst into song again,
just inches away from my boot. What a wonderful joyous serenade to break
through a cold and rainy morning.

Later the creek had risen several inches and a couple of us were standing
in the water amoung the milling coho, who were squirming about on the now
underwater sidewalk, when a Bald eagle flew by, maybe 10 feet away, and
about 4 feet off the water. I kept hoping the bird would come back and
snatch a fish in front of us, but not this time. As we were wrapping up
today in class one of my more reserved teenager students said, that fish
stuff was kind of boring, but the eagle, now THAT was cool. I noticed he
took home two bird books from our libary tonight.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
Monroe, WA

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