At the risk of offending people who take great pride in the glories of Capitol Lake in Olympia :-), I want to report that Saturday's bird walk revealed the greatly reduced numbers of all birds that I mentioned about a month ago, but at least we had a trifle more variety. We had two pair of Canvasbacks at the extreme south end of the lake and a few Common Goldeneyes, and there was a small group of Ring-necks farther north a day or two before. I still would like some explanation for the numbers; Kelly McAllister's note about the use of herbicide in the lake may be telling, and someone also mentioned that there had been a drought in the American prairie areas, the Dakotas; but was there also a drought in the extensive northern areas from Alaska through the Canadian prairies where so many of these ducks breed?

(BTW, Evergreen e-mail has been down for several days, and if anyone tried to send me anything important over the weekend, please send it again.)

As a happier note, here on Long Lake outside Lacey we were treated to about two dozen glorious male Common Mergansers yesterday, as well as a number of females. A wonderful sight! That's the kind of aesthetic experience that makes birding important to me. Yeah, I went over and got a great look at the Redwing one day, but . . . well, I won't try to pit one experience against the other, but I sure do love sitting here and enjoying those mergansers.

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503