I hope everyone enjoyed the lovely weekend- sounds like we're back to the stormy season again next week.

On Saturday, I was out just as the horizon got light to fill bird feeders. Two sets of trumpeter swans flew over my house (Ebey Slough, just past junction with Snohomish River). Oddly, I could hear the wingbeats and their gently honking, but couldn't see them even though they were just overhead. The sky was inky indigo, but not really dark. The only thing I could figure is that the sound traveled away from the birds. Two owls flew down the fenceline right by me, but I couldn't identify them in the low light. Before we left, our two neighborhood bald eagles landed in the cottonwood across the river and sat as the light came. They are building the nest again- ripping off cottonwood branches, testing them out, discarding some.

We went to Bob Heirman Wildlife Refuge (thanks for the referral, Ron Sandelin). There were duck hunters on the river, the main reason I don't go in the fall, and trumpeter swans, which is a good reason to ignore the gunfire early in the a.m. There were a lot of ducks with the trumpeter swans, but I had my not-so-good camera rather than my scope or binoculars, so I couldn't tell what they were. It's the first time I've really listened to the birds take off from the water- what I thought were their wings beating really seems to be their feet slapping as they take a run, but maybe I'm wrong.

We then went up to Samish Flats to the WDFW viewing area (thanks, Barry Levine). I didn't see any short-eared owls, as I hoped, but on the way we saw the trumpeters by Sam Bell road, right there, several herons in the fields, an amazing number of harriers at one of the sharp 90's, 6 bald eagles in trees by a yard before the 90 (4 white heads, 2 dark). In the WDFW area, we saw more harriers, including one preening itself on the ground that pretty much just ignored us. We heard ducks, but they sounded peculiar and almost drunk - and then the hunters with the duck calls appeared out of the brush. They quack all night when the fields get wet in the winter behind my house, and they never sound like that! We also got decent pictures of a song sparrow and a Townsend's sparrow, each patrolling their own small patch of bramble.

And today (Sunday) as we were driving out to the hardware store, a pileated woodpecker dashed across the road. We sat and watched the pileated cover a number of alder snags slated for removal by a neighbor trying to "clean things up". I was thrilled to see one- here I said we never see them! There was a small flock of mallards on the river, and a female downy woodpecker at a suet feeder.

Monica