Hi Tweets,

Barbara and I went over to extreme NW Oregon on January 3 not just for the owls and phalaropes, but because we hoped to spot the Emperor Goose that has been reported as recently as December 27th and 30th at the Hammond Basin.

We didn't find the Emperor Goose, though we spent about two hours there in three separate short trips to Hammond from Fort Stevens. There we had better luck -- at Area C we found four Snowy Owls and about 100 Red Phalaropes. (We also saw small numbers of phalaropes in assorted ponds both near Hammond and on the Long Beach Peninsula, WA.) Someone reported the other day that one of the Fort Stevens snowies dined on a phalarope; there certainly were plenty of them around, though catching one must have required some nimble flight from the owl. We watched a Northern Harrier make two careful passes at one of the snowies that perched atop a shore pine.

On the way south on January 2 we found around 200 each of Black-bellied Plovers and Dunlin, a Horned Grebe, and a half-dozen Trumpeter Swans on the Brady Loop Rd. The raptors there were a Cooper's Hawk, two Red-tails, four Kestrels, and a Merlin. Near Aberdeen, just north of Hwy 12, we found a lone Snow Goose with a flock of 20+ Canada Geese. At South Bend we watched a White-tailed Kite on the north side of the Willapa River.

Good birding!

Paul Webster
Seattle
paul.websterATcomcast.net