Hi Linda,

I saw 6 Varied Thrushes and heard a few more while hiking on Long Island at Willapa NWR about a week and a half ago. Just this morning, I heard one for the first time this season in the woods in back of my house in Olympia. In addition to the Varied Thrushes on Long Island, there were numerous Winter Wrens, both Kinglets, and even a few Red Crossbills high up in the Sitka Spruces and Western Hemlocks. I guess it's that time of the year.

Good birding,

Lonnie Somer
Olympia, WA
wheelermombi at comcast.net


Hi Tweeters,
Yesterday morning I heard the unmistakable whistle of a Varied Thrush at Wallace
Swamp Creek Park. I know it's too early but it continued to call and I am sure
it was a Varied Thrush. Although I never did see the source of the call I
tracked it to the area of the park that was the most predictable area of the
park to find them last winter. I finally gave up my hunt thinking it could have
been a whistle from the Kenmore School playground adjacent to the park. Well,
today I was pleased to see (but not hear) a male Varied Thrush in the Kenmore
School Arboretum. I just checked my records and the earliest I've seen Varied
thrush in Wallace Swamp Creek Park was 11-2-05.
Has any one else in the lowlands seen VATH this fall? I thought it was mountain
snows that brought them down, it's not snowing yet is it?
Linda Phillips