Hi Tweeters,

When Dante described the various torments of Hell, he forgot to include grading undergrad research papers. After staring at a pile of these that I have to return by Monday, I did the only sensible thing and headed up to Snohomish to look for the Emperor Goose. Both my kids, Deyland and Cally (the Evil Anti-birder of Ancient Prophecy), came along. We arrived by 10:30 or so, just in time for a break in the rain. As noted in other postings, there isn't much room for cars to pull over and the road was very busy. In fact, the little pull-off was occupied by two police cars. I nonchalantly pulled up behind them and went over to one of the cars for a chat. There were two policemen in the car, one of whom lectured me for several minutes that he understood the rarity of the goose in question in this area, but the number of birders were creating a road hazard and he was informing people that they should not stop there. I could see the small flock of mixed swans and geese in th!
e field
, and must have looked so pathetic, that he relented and said that I could have five minutes. No more. I set up the scope in seconds and was very lucky in that the Emperor Goose was in plain view on the left side of the flock (there was a much larger mixed flock to the south of this one, but this had more geese, so we decided to go for the smaller one instead). Both kids got good looks at it as well. My sincere thanks to Steven Mlodinow and the others who later posted about this bird. This was one of my most wanted to see species.

We then headed up to Skagit and Fir Island for a quick look around. The rain was really coming down by then. Hunters were everywhere, including some that were hunched over scores of Snow Goose decoys in fields. The real Snow Geese were scattered over several of the fields. We also had a nice look at a hovering Rough-legged Hawk while driving down Fir Island Rd. Between the rain and the hunters, we decided to head home.

Good birding an may you never have to grade undergrad research papers,

Lonnie Somer
Olympia, WA
wheelermombi at comcast.net