Subject: [Tweeters] Samish--Prairie Falcon and Pacific Golden Plover
Date: Jan 20 19:57:24 2008
From: Penny Koyama - plkoyama at verizon.net


Tweets,

It's still there--the Pacific Golden Plover in with the Dunlins and Black-bellied Plovers on Farm to Market Rd (near Sunset Rd ) in the field ponds west of the road. Steve Dang and Adam Sedgley led some of the Seattle Audubon staff on a field trip to the Skagit and Samish, and we saw the bird on the way home at about 3:30 p.m. It was not in the big flock, but was at the edge of water further back, sometimes with one or two BB Plovers, sometimes alone. For those who think this bird may be hard to pick out, it is fairly obvious once you get a scope on it--it's quite gold ("like butta") and obviously smaller than the BBs. Adam commented that he has searched through many flocks of BBs looking for a Golden, wondering if he was missing one. Then when you look at it, it seems so obvious. (At least this one was!) We also had 4 Short-eared Owls at or near the West 90, 5 or 6 Rough-legged Hawks (including a dark morph) and a nice Prairie Falcon, viewed from what was formerly (I guess) the Harris' Sparrow site at West Edison.

It was a great day, warmer and less windy than we expected, especially after starting out in wet Seattle weather in the early morning.

Penny Koyama, Bothell
plkoyama at verizon.net