Tweets,
My husband and I did the same thing last week--drove down to Coburg in the rain, spent the night in Eugene, and watched that beautiful duck both in the late afternoon rain and the morning bit-o-sun. A word of caution--the RV Mgr said he has lost thousands of dollars allowing this duck to be seen. He reports that people come in, park in the RV slots, and that he has had to issue many refunds to irritated RV customers who drive to their assigned slots and find them "occupied" by birders. In addition, when the duck is flushed to the next pond, birders have tramped over there and actually destroyed his fence, which he had to replace, in order to get the view they want. I offered this very kind mgr a few bucks "for bird food and clean-up" but he declined it, saying he has concluded that 10% of people, including birders, just can't/won't get it and will never follow rules. This is sad, I know. So if you go down there, be nice, park along the left curb, and hope others will be not cause problems for this business owner!

Good birding, Penny Koyama, Bothell
plkoyama at verizon.net
----- Original Message -----
From: wheelermombi at comcast.net
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 7:27 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Falcated Duck Still at Coburg, OR


Hi Tweeters,

Since my plans for today had been rained out and I was experiencing serious birding withdrawl, I decided to have a go at spotting the Falcated Duck way down in Coburg, OR (off of exit 199 on I-5). After driving all of the way down there last year and not seeing it, I swore that I wouldn't try again, but I have been obsessing on it ever since. So I threw both the scope and my son Deyland in the car (after dragging him out of bed) and headed south. Upon arriving, we checked in with the RV park manager and then headed to the pond. The Falcated Duck was swimming about in plain view. It really is one of the more striking ducks that I have seen. It crossed paths with a few of the Gadwalls that were in the pond, allowing for a nice comparison. Several other species of winter ducks, plus Canada Geese and two Greater White-fronted Geese, American Coots, and more than 20 Dowitchers (sp?)(before I had time to train the scope on them, a tor! rential downpore started, so we fled) were all sharing this small pond.

As we were heading back to the highway, a Merlin flew over the car. We also must have seen at least 30 swans flying in the distance over some of the sheep pastures off of the highway in central Oregon.

If anyone is interested in seeing the Falcated Duck and needs more detailed directions, feel free to e-mail me.

Good birding,

Lonnie Somer
Olympia, WA
wheelermombi at comcast.net


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