With the posting last week of several interesting birds sighted at
Ridgefield NWR, the wife and I took advantage of a nice day yesterday to go
that way. We weren't disappointed. We didn't see the Prairie Falcon or the
Short-eared Owl, but did manage manage the Red-shouldered Hawk, the
White-tailed Kite and unless someone tells me it isn't so, the 'Harlan's'
Red-tailed Hawk. Of course those three were either in bad light, real far
away or both, but I did pull out some pictures. All the other Red-tailed
Hawks were more cooperative, sitting still and waiting while I positioned
the truck and letting me drive almost up to them.
Almost didn't see a Great Horned Owl by the trail to the blind, and I still
don't have enough lens for anything on Rest Lake and didn't try to ID the
various swans, geese, ducks out there. A person could go crazy trying to
sort out the geese, but the only ones I saw were Canada (few) and Cackling
(tons).
We also noted lots of Song Sparrows, several Savannah Sparrows, some
Yellow-rumped Warblers (a flock of 15 feeding in grass and weeds) and 3
meadowlarks. We were told there were Purple Finch and we saw some finch but
not well enough to make an identification.
Pictures are on my site; http://www.pbase.com/jvhigbee/image/71297322

A really nice day,

Joseph Higbee
Spanaway, WA
Mailto: jvhigbee at hotmail.com