The Northern Harrier tends to be the "clean up crew" of the marshes. Injured or sick waterfowl are often found by them and quickly used as the main course for the day. I've seen them cleaning up everything from hayfield snakes to Canadian geese. In areas where bird dog trainers plant live birds (pigeons, quail, chuckers, pheasants, etc.) the Harrier will learn to spot the plant and be down on the game bird before the trainer returns to find just a lot of feathers.
Clarence
Onalaska, WA.
----- Original Message -----
From: Mason Flint
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 1:40 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Monday Samish/Skagit


John Tubbs and I birded Samish flats and Skagit/Fir Island on Monday. Needless to say it was a beautiful day.



We started at the "Harris's Sparrow spot" near Edison but didn't find the bird. That's my second try recently so perhaps the bird has moved on.or I'm just unlucky.. We did see numerous GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS and SONG SPARROWS in the area. In the area from Edison to West 90 we saw 10-12 NORTHERN HARRIERS, 2 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS, a couple of dozen BALD EAGLES, 1 PEREGRINE FALCON and 2 SHORT-EARED OWLS, and a handful of RED-TAILED HAWKS including a stunning dark morph that we briefly thought might be a Harlan's Hawk. We scoped Samish Bay for a few minutes and found 2 EURASIAN WIGEON among the thousands of AMERICAN WIGEON and NORTHERN PINTAIL, a few dozen distant BRANT, several distant BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS and hundreds of DUNLIN flying around. Just south of West 90 we saw one AMERICAN KESTREL. From Samish Island we scoped out a PACIFIC LOON, RED-THROATED LOON, COMMON GOLDENEYE, SURF SCOTER and thousands of WIGEON, MALLARD and N PINTAIL.



We made a few stops on Fir Island. We drove out on Rawlins Road but the Snow Geese weren't there. We drove to the end of Rawlins and walked up onto the dike where we saw yet more NORTHERN HARRIERS. We made a few stops along Maupin Road from which we saw the large flocks SNOW GEESE in fields to the east. Yes, there were more NORTHERN HARRIER in the fields including one feeding on a large bird.perhaps gull? We thought that was odd. We found several groups of TRUMPETER SWANS but didn't find any Tundra's.



We took a nice walk out on the dike at the Game Range where we saw lots of sparrows (WHITE-CROWNED, GOLDEN-CROWNED, SONG, but no surprises), two MERLIN flying together, 2 COOPER'S HAWKS, 1 NORTHERN SHRIKE and various other usual suspects including RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS, 2 BROWN CREEPERS.and more NORTHERN HARRIERS. Over the course of the day we must have seen 20-25 Harrier.



Our last stop was a the Stanwood Sewage Treatment Ponds where we added some additional ducks (N SHOVELER, LESSER SCAUP, RUDDY DUCKS including some males that appeared to be moving into breeding plumage, as well as a MARSH WREN and LINCOLN'S SPARROW.



John kept the official tally but I think we ended the day with 60 species for the day.



Regards,



Mason Flint

Bellevue, WA









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