My wife and I headed up to the Skagit area this morning also. We had a Merlin on the road to the wildlife managment area headquarters. There were also about 25 Mourning Doves at the headquarters. Among the thousands of Snow Geese, we saw a Greater White-fronted Goose and 2 "Blue" Snow Geese at the goose preserve just west of Conway. There also was a nice Rough-legged Hawk in the fields with the geese. We saw some interesting behavior from a N. Harrier. It was hovering over one of the ponds trying to grab a Pied-billed Grebe. The grebe would dive each time the Harrier would try to grab it. After about 5 attempts, the Harrier veered to the bank and pounced on something. When it got up, it looked like it had a Yellow-legs in its talons. It took off and landed out of sight in the grasses. We had never seen a Harrier hunt over the water like that or seen one take a shorebird. I guess that's why we keep watching.
There was a Northern Shrike at the North Access and a American Kestrel just west of the Rexville cafe. It was interesting to read Dennis's posting about the long-billed Ravens because we saw a long-billed Red-tailed Hawk on Downey Rd just south of the Farmhouse Inn. I have seen Bud Anderson give a talk about this "long-billed" syndrome but we have never seen it on a bird ourselves. We sent a note to Bud about its location. We had a couple more Rough-legged Hawks and a few Red-tails on the Samish Flats. There were some shorebirds flying by but the were to far away to ID.

Neil Zimmerman
Brier, WA
n3zims at comcast.net