Greetings All,

Tracey Norris, Charlie Wright and myself decided to do a bit of twitching today, something I haven't done much of in a long while. We started off at Marymoor where we located the Baltimore Oriole, and walked our dog at the same time. Hard to beat that in Western Washington. It was nice to hear and see several Red-eyed Vireos and Eastern Kingbirds and the like as well.

We stayed around to attempt better looks but eventually left to head south for the Bay-breasted Warbler. We arrived at about 12:45 and heard its song almost immediately. It took a while before it finally popped out in the open but it sang in the sunshine for quite a while before darting back off into the firs. It was such a beautiful day we decided to do some butterflyin' while we were birding, seeing alot of Clodius Parnassians, a real sweet looking butterfly, if only they would have stayed still so I could get a photograph...

We stopped at the Clay-colored Sparrow spot in Tenino and the bird obliged us by flying up onto an overhead electrical wire and singing its little heart out. We then ended our day viewing the rare Mardon Skipper and Puget "Boisduval's" Blues at Scatter Creek Wildlife Area.

Turned out to be a gorgeous day for a chase!

I managed a couple of photographs of the bay-breast, not as good as some others that have been posted by several others, a bit backlit.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross/
click on all sizes to get to the large size.

Cheers and good birding,

Ryan Shaw
Lakewood, WA
rtshaw80 at hotmail.com
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