Dear Tweeters,

Yesterday (6-15-08) I spent about two hours looking in vain for two rare woodpeckers that Joel Brady-Power and/or Ryan Merrill had reported from eastern Skagit County. Although I found neither the Three-toed Woodpecker nor the Red-naped Sapsucker, I did spot a Northern Goshawk.

The woodpeckers had been seen on the north side of SR 20 between milepost 151 and the Easy Pass trailhead, a few days ago. I believe it was Joel Brady-Power that found them, but it might have been Ryan Merrill. In any case, birders seeking these two woodpeckers would be better off going during the week, earlier in the day. The traffic noise was horrendous as holiday-makers thundered through on a Sunday.

The goshawk flew northwards across SR 20 at treetop level, just as I was giving up on the woodpeckers and returning to the parking area. The parking area is one of those infernal "US Fee" areas, by the way.

Interestingly enough, the place where the goshawk flew over was precisely the same where I saw one in April of 1998.

On a personal note, I am having one of my best goshawk years ever--two sightings in one year! My observations of Northern Goshawks now make up 0.01236 percent of my lifetime bird records. Observations of Red-tailed Hawks, on the other hand, make up 2.4 percent of those records. This suggests that, at least where I go birding, one's probability of observing the goshawk is about one two-hundredth that of observing the RTHA.

Here are some other birds I saw yesterday in eastern Skagit County:

A Dusky Flycatcher calling "dew, dew-hic" at the eastern part of County Line Ponds (SR 20 in Skagit County, just W of Whatcom line). An odd warbler song here might have been an American Redstart, but I only heard it a few times, and it stopped.

A nest-building Empidonax at the western County Line Ponds (a few hundred feet west of the above); this bird was a Hammond's or a Dusky, but did not give a good look. It gathered white spider silk or plant fibres from some low brush, before disappearing.

An Eastern Kingbird at Corkindale.

A Chipping Sparrow at Hardy Burn parking area, plus another near the SR 20 sign that reads "Crater Peak in the Distance."

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch
garybletsch at yahoo.com
Near Lyman, WA








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