Dear Tweeters,

For what it's worth, I have focussed much of my life's
energies on birding, going back to 1974. My efforts
and record-keeping increased dramatically since I
moved to Skagit County in 1990. Since then, I have
focussed on making as many observations of birds, and
as many species of birds, as I possibly can,
approaching a level of effort that has sometimes
bordered on lunacy. Most of this effort has been in
Skagit County.

I have entered about 135,000 of my bird observations
onto a database program. About 5000 each are American
Robin and Eurasian Starling observations, followed
closely by American Crow.

I have made only 16 observations of Northern Goshawks,
lifetime, despite countless hours in the field,
including eight years living in pretty good Goshawk
country (Concrete). I have never managed to find one
in the Puget Sound Lowlands.

This year, I have made over 20,000 bird observations
so far. Only once did I observe a Goshwk.

Perhaps I flatter myself, but I think that's pretty
good evidence as to how rare and how elusive these
birds really are.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch






--- Denny Granstrand <dgranstrand at charter.net> wrote:

> Hi Tweeters,
>
> I looked on the National Audubon Christmas Count
> website at the three
> Tucson area Christmas Counts. For the years that I
> looked (three or
> four for each count) there were no goshawks
> reported.
>
> I, too, was put off by the attitude displayed on the
> blog. "I'm
> always right and you aren't going to teach me
> anything!" doesn't seem
> to be the normal approach.
>
> Denny Granstrand
> Yakima, WA
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> * * *
> * Denny Granstrand *
> * Yakima, WA *
> * dgranstrand at charter.net *
> * Denny's bird photos can be seen online at: *
> http://granstrand.net/gallery/
>
>
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> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
>
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>



Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com



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