Hey tweets, I thought you might like an update on my son Alex, young
birder/Marine who was wounded in Iraq last Sept. Alex came home for a visit
last week looking mighty fine. He has his new foot, an amazing piece of
technology that looks just like his real one. In fact, the prosthetists took
a mold of his left foot, flopped the image somehow and made a right foot out
of some kind of soft-feeling plastic. Then an artist came and spent 4 hours
painting it to match. He even stuck in real hairs. The result is so lifelike
that Alex got used to walking with it in a matter of a few days. In fact,
one evening at home, Alex came back from a night out and took his foot off
in the living room, dropping his sweatshirt on top so that the foot was kind
of sticking out. Imagine my surprise the next morning when I staggered in
with my eyes bleary from lack of caffeine and caught a glimpse of a
real-looking foot sticking out of some rumpled clothing on the floor. I
swear my heart leaped like a salmon.

Alex sends his thanks to all of you for your kind concern. He really is back
to himself now. One day, he and I went birding at the Fill. I told him that
I have taken up Dennis Paulson's challenge to have a Big Year in Washington
and that I really wanted to see a new bird for the year with Alex. Alex
obligingly winkled a CLIFF SWALLOW out of mass of swallows swooping by in a
confusion of loops and dives. He hasn't lost a step with his birding skills,
although he said he felt pretty stale. Walking around my favorite place on
earth with my son so handsome, talking about birds the whole time was an
experience of such sublime joy that I truly wish each one of you could have
come along. The little rays of happiness that must have been sparkling
around us like an aura would have brought smiles to your faces.

When Alex left to go back to rehab in Washington, DC, I decided I simply
could not face returning to an empty house. So I just kept driving. Why not
bird in a grand loop south to Ridgefield, east to College Place, north to
Sun Lakes and back again, adding rarities and spring arrivals to my Big Year
list? As always, birding cheered me when nothing else could.

Here are some highlights:

Brady Loop (4/5):
In misty weather that kept fogging up my scope, I located the RUFF that the
Sullivans first found. Thanks, Ruth and Patrick, for once again contributing
to the richness of birding in our state. The ruff was just where they said
it would be, in a flooded field that had unexpected dips in it that
sheltered surprising numbers of shorebirds. The ruff stayed hidden behind
one of the field's miniscule ridges for at least an hour after I drove up.
Then it strolled out in the company of several black-bellied plovers, poked
around for food for all of 5 minutes and then dove back behind the ridge,
never to come out again. I can't say that this bird got my blood rushing
around too fast - it resembled nothing so much as a football on legs, and a
pretty momentary football at that - but a ruff is still a ruff.

Just as I was leaving the field, a flock of 10 GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE
flew in, lowered their orange landing gear and alit in the field. Nearby
were two SANDHILL CRANES hunting for bugs in the grass. All very beautiful.

Ridgefield (4/6):
The place was swarming with WILSON'S SNIPE, calling and flying back and
forth across the road at the first turn past the host's kiosk. I stopped the
car to enjoy the sounds, and one snipe flopped down so close to my car that
I could have reached out and petted it, did I dare open the car door (which
I did not, given the eagle eye of the host in the kiosk). The snipe looked
up at me with suspicion in its eyes but then seemed to think I was part of
the scenery. I had to work hard to keep from laughing out loud - being eyed
by a bird who can look up at you without raising its head, merely because
its eyes are stuck on so high, is very comical.

At the bird blind further on, I lucked into finding a HOUSE WREN hopping
around in the brush. This sighting was so unusual that when I wrote my
finding on the white board back at the kiosk, the host asked me if I hadn't
really seen a Bewick's wren. No, I said, no eye stripe; long tail, so not a
winter wren; plain back, so not a marsh wren. I went through my litany of
field marks, but I don't think I convinced him. I thought about bragging
that I am a bird master of Seattle Audubon (I knew I should have sewn my
master birder patch onto my forehead), but that is not our way. We master
birder graduates are much too modest. (Well, really, I know very well that
the minute I start bragging about my birding skills, some bird is going to
come along that will confuse me, and I'll say something foolish - like on
the final exam, identifying a starling as a snipe in bad light).

Even more unusual, at the straight stretch of old trees beyond the big
mudflats, I found two WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCHES among the hordes of tree
swallows. That raised my new-found friend's eyebrows even more. But you
gotta go with your observation. You can't start mistrusting your eyes, or
where would you be? I will say that when I mentioned spotting a LOGGERHEAD
SHRIKE perched on a bit of bramble out in the middle of the huge field of
grass at the end of the loop drive, the kiosk host said, "Oh, that guy is
back again." He must have hung out there last season.

Maryhill State Park (4/7):
Thanks to Hal's book (a true treasure for which all birders should feel
eternally grateful), I decided to drive down to Maryhill to look for LESSER
GOLDFINCHES. Found 'em foraging in the grass, but it warn't easy. The day
was blustery and the birds were perched behind sheltering leaves. They
chattered to each other in the most irritating way: I could hear them but
darned if I could see them. Golfers thwarted to this degree tend to fling
their clubs into the drink, and I was beginning to contemplate heaving my
tripod into a picnic table. Bad birder. Luckily, a male lesser goldfinch
finally consented to perch on a nearby post, giving me great views.
Frustration all gone.

Umatilla NWR:
All alone with the wind and the birds, I spent hours here soaking in the
peace. A lone AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN floated on the water, looking like a
clownish version of Shakepeare's Avon swans: beautifully white, gracefully
reposing, then swinging around to show its Durante-sized schnozolla. Up on
the table land was a single LONG-BILLED CURLEW zooming back and forth like
an airplane doing a photo pass at an airshow.

College Place:
On the strength of Mike and MerryLynn Denny's provocative posts to tweeters,
I drove to College Place to try to find some BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS. The weather
was truly horrendous - I have never driven in such wind. At times,
visibility was reduced to zero as whole fields of dust were picked up and
carried north. Tumbleweeds shot across the freeway like cannonballs. They
seemed to have an evil ability to appear just as I was driving by, at which
point they would crash into my car and grab on with their prickly little
claws. By the end of the journey, my car resembled a giant St. Bernard with
burrs stuck all over it. Luckily, College Place was relatively calm. I went
to Fourth and Birch Streets and started strolling around with my binoculars,
hoping that the homeowners would not call the police to come and take me
away. Neighborhood birding and cemetery birding always make me feel
unpleasantly conspicuous. I walked up and down Birch Street for about half
an hour and was about to sit down in my car to think over my dearth of birds
when a flock of four BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS flew into a tree overhead. Talk about
service. Anyway, I want to thank the Dennys for a thrilling experience. I
hardly ever get to see Bohemian Waxwings.

Sun Lakes State Park (4/8):
The last major stop on my tour was Sun Lakes SP to look for the LESSER
BLACK-BACKED GULL reported by Doug Schonewald. Sure enough, it was swooping
around among ring-billed gulls, just as Doug said. Eventually, it landed on
the water very close to a California gull. So I got to see all of the gull
in flight and on the water, near other gulls for a good comparison. To be a
birder is to love detail. I stared at this one gull for two hours - and it
wasn't much of a gull, either! I mean, if it weren't a rarity, if it were in
the company of a hundred of its kind, it would be just one more scruffy
youngster. But far from home, flying and floating by itself, it was a
beautiful sight. I got to check out the eye color, the exact shade of gray
in its saddle (compared to adult Californias and Ring-billeds), its size,
its wing covert colors and inner primaries, its legs and feet as it landed,
and its overall attenuated shape when afloat. In the middle of my
observation, the park host drove up to check me out. He couldn't understand
why I was so absorbed by one junky looking gull when I could have been
watching a giant crane try to hoist an earth-mover out of the lake. The
driver had lost control of the vehicle the day before and drove it right
into the water, like a scene from "America's Funniest Videos." How to
explain that studying a rare gull was loads more riveting? I didn't even
try.

Also at the park: WHITE-THROATED SWIFTS, BREWER'S SPARROWS, SAGE THRASHERS,
and two RING-NECKED PHEASANTS, of all things, strutting in the sage. What a
laugh. Altogether, I saw 92 species.- Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com