Dear Tweeters,

Bob Kuntz and I got to see the Ruff today also. Bob,
Michael Fleming and I had been scanning the fields
for the better part of an hour, when Joel of Anacortes
told us he'd seen it. Several times we glimpsed it,
only to have it disappear, usually by walking behind
one of the little furrows or undulations in the mud
field. We also saw the bird fly over toward the yard
that has a big blue van parked near a barn. The Ruff
(or Reeve as Steve Mlodinow pointed out) did not seem
any bigger than a Killdeer, so it pays to keep one's
eyes peeled. There were Dunlin and Black-bellied
Plover out there; closer to the dike was a lone,
rather stationary-looking Greater White-fronted Goose,
which may have been wounded.

The location where we saw the Ruff was in the muddy
field, not the grassy field, on the north side of Boe
Road (S of Stanwood, Snohomish County), and west of a
place that has lots of electrical substation-type of
equipment.

Thanks to Steve Mlodinow and to Joel for helping me
get a long-time ABA jinx-bird off the jinx list!

We also saw a Greater Yellowlegs at Stanwood Sewage
Treatment Plant, in some dreadful weather.

Later in the day I found some Least Sandpipers on Fir
Island, foraging once again with American Pipits and
Killdeer among the rotting cucumbers, just east of the
North Fork Skagit bridge. No telling what might turn
up in this spot--there must be lots of invertebrates
there among the offal.


Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com



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