Hello all,

Played hookey today to hike around Ebey's Landing on Whidbey Island with
my girlfriend, some interesting stuff to report. First, we had a flyby of
a male Northern Harrier that had a cicular light blue tag on his right
wing, with a marking that appeared to be a black "international no" sign
(or a circle with a line through it). If anybody knows of someone
conducting a project on raptors/harriers in the area, please let me know
so that I can let them know about it.

Second, the juncos in the area were behaving oddly, almost completely
silent, but every so often, they would spring off their perches one by
one, and fly out (often straight up) and back as if they were flycatching
(no insects in the air in the area), pausing for maybe a minute or so, and
then doing it again. Any ideas of the significance of this behavior?
Seems to me that a similar question was asked last year, I must not have
payed enough attention to the answer, if there was one. The birds were
pecking at some old-looking berries, the best explaination that I could
think of was that the juncos had eaten some slightly fermented berries and
gotten a little tipsy, as I have seen waxwings and robins do, but that
didn't seem to make much sense. Aereal displays, maybe? Hmmm...

A nice day, and good birds. A few others today:
Pacific Loon (3)
Horned Grebe (15)
Red-breasted Merganser (8)
Common Goldeneye (1)
Surf Scoter (many)
Harlequin Duck (3)
Long-tailed Duck (9, all calling loudly all day)
Northern Shrike (1)
Bewick's Wren (2)
Fox Sparrow (5)

Good weather and better birding!

Chris Duke
dukec at cc.wwu.edu
Bellingham, WA