Dear Tweeters,

Today I saw a Great Horned Owl at Cockreham Island,
Skagit County. This was in the same location where
birders have seen them in the past, in the forest
along the river.

It has been years since I have heard the screeching
call of this species. I may have heard it this
evening, but it sounded different from my
recollections. I used to hear the young screaming
quite often when I'd go on spring and summer camping
trips in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Today, there was a big, dark adult perched up in a
tree. A raven kept flying by and making passes, but
the foliage was too dense for him to get close to the
owl. All the while I kept hearing an upslurred,
high-pitched whistly screech, lasting less than a
second. It was a two-parted call. The adult was not
making this call--I could tell that for sure.

Isn't this a bit of an odd time of year for young GHOW
to be calling to an adult? Are there some variations
in the screechy call of this species? I seem to
remember a call that sounded more like a screechy
inhalation.

Other birds on Cockreham Island included an American
Dipper and a Spotted Sandpiper with fifteen
Glaucous-winged Gulls in the river, and a lone Greater
Yellowlegs at the west pond. A small flock of Western
Grebes has been hanging out in the Skagit River,
offshore from Lyman, along with up to six Pied-billed
Grebes. On the Burmaster Road east of Sedro-Woolley
was a flock of over a thousand Eurasian Starlings,
with close to that many Brewer's Blackbirds, hundreds
of Red-winged Blackbirds, and close to 200 American
Crows. At the wetland near the powerlines on this road
were some Shovellers and Green-winged Teal, the first
duck flock I have seen on the "Minkler Flats" this
season. On the Green Road (Butler Flats) was a dark
Merlin.



=====

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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