Hello, tweets.

Ben Feltner, Netta Smith, and I spent the day (19 Feb) in Whatcom and
Skagit counties looking for birds for Ben, who was on a Big Year quest.
We saw the usual suspects, including veritable crowds of birders at the
West 90 admiring the Gyrfalcon, but a few of our observations were of
interest to me.

This is the second time in a week I've seen an entire Snow Goose flock
of close to 10,000 birds lift off the Fir Island fields simultaneously
and fly out to Skagit Bay late in the afternoon, presumably to roost on
the bay. One of nature's spectacles.

male (Eurasian) Green-winged Teal on the south shore of Drayton Harbor
(BF, DP), with single male American Green-winged Teal; it was paired
with a female. I assume the female wasn't a Eurasian, but who knows?

I was shocked to see only one male Eurasian Wigeon in a flock of 300+
American Wigeons west of Edison, the largest flock of wigeons we saw.
This is the area where we used to see dozens of Eurasians in American
flocks in late winter.

Second winter Glaucous Gull roosting with other large gulls in a
flooded field just south of Samish Island.

Northern Shrike at the Jensen Access on Fir Island carrying in its feet
a Least Sandpiper that it just caught. It flew across the salt marsh,
totally puzzling me until I realized what I was seeing, landed on a
stump, then flew right toward and past us to land in a small tree at
the parking lot. It tried to lodge the sandpiper on a branch, but it
fell to the ground. The shrike sat there looking down for a minute or
so, then dropped to the ground out of sight. We didn't want to bother
it, but a half hour later, we walked to the place and there was no
trace of either bird. Obviously it had flown off with it again. Least
Sandpipers weigh about 20 grams, Northern Shrike about 60 grams, so
that bird was carrying a respectable load. It's quite unusual for a
passerine bird to be able to carry something in its feet, but obviously
this shrike species is highly adapted to be a raptor.

If you haven't birded there, Drayton Harbor seems to me to have the
largest populations of water birds anywhere in the area. With the good
light of a clear day, birding there was absolutely spectacular, with
good observation points the south side of the harbor and Semiahmoo
Spit (all the way to the end). I think there might have been herring
spawning, accounting for the large numbers of birds such as
Red-breasted Mergansers. The place was lousy with loons, although we
looked in vain for a Yellow-billed (also looked in vain at Bayview).

Dennis
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Dennis Paulson & Netta Smith
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382