..................48 degrees and partly-mostly cloudy day at Ridgefield NWR---River-S Unit, just north of Vancouver, Wash. .....a real nice late-autumn day.
...................Hawks everywhere-------RED-TAILED; RED-SHOULDERED; ROUGH-LEGGED; NORTHERN HARRIER; KESTRALS; and 2 BALD EAGLES thrown into the mixture. Good numbers of TUNDRA SWANS; zillions of CANADA GEESE, with some SNOW GEESE with them;; some SANDHILL CRANES and plenty of the usual migrant and resident ducks, grebes, and GR.BLUE HERONS providing a pleasing symphony of sounds. RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS; GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS; LINCOLN'S SPARROWS; and MARSH WRENS and a few other unidentified small birds passing over or by---even a few frogs added their accompliments to this symphony. Some RIVER OTTERS didn't have anything to say! A PEREGRINE FALCON was reported several days ago, but I didn't spot one today.
..................A nice day to be up-and-around. About 7-8 cars with birders from the Portland, Ore. Audubon Society were touring the auto route after having visited, I believe, the Carty Unit north of Ridgefieid , Wash.-----along with above-average amount of other visitors for a weekday, as observed at my day-long Monday volunteering at the River-S Unit contact station and a driving patrol of the tour route. Also. volunteers started their Monday winter Canada goose counts today---to help the gov't get valuable statistics on the yearly numbers of several species of Canada Geese--tagged and non-tagged..

.................Cheers...........Gerald Hamilton
Brush Prairie, Wash..
geraldham at comcast.net