Hi Tweets

Yesterday I was up on the Samish Flats with a client. We had a good day with no rain or snow, and very little rain. As might be expected for this time of year there were a ton of BALD EAGLEs (probably 45-50), lots of RED-TAILED HAWKs (maybe 30), about 8 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKs including one very nice dark morph, the NORTHERN HARRIERs were active all over the flats putting on a good show. There was an absolutely gorgeous PEREGRINE FALCON perched along Bayview-Edison Road, a male AMERICAN KESTREL up at the north end of Bow.

The find of the day was an immature, grey morph GYRFALCON on the south side of Field Road just east of Farm-to-Market Road. The bird was perched, stayed long enough for us to tentatively identify it. It then flew a ways further east and perched again. This time we could get very nice looks and confirm the identity. This is a large, dark brown bird, the primary tips fall quite a ways short of the tail, and it has a mustachial mark below the bill and a light superciliary line. The breast and belly are distinctly streaked with dark markings, and the tail is marked with narrow dark and light bands. Hope this bird turns up for folks.

There were a ton of ducks around, but my client was mainly interested in raptors so we didn't work the ducks over. There was one large flock of AMERICAN WIGEON north along Chuckanut Drive in Bow that had at least one EURASIAN WIGEON in it.

It was a GOOD day!!

Brian H. Bell
Birding & Natural History Guide
Woodinville WA
mail to bell asoc at isomedia dot com