Greetings Tweeters,
I spent about 1.5 Hours at the Nisqually Refuge before work this AM. A first of year Short-eared Owl was a nice find from the dike trail out over the salt marsh near the beginning of the board walk construction. The continuing Great Egret also made a showing in the same area, but was moving around quite a bit. There were lots of Pipits and, in one of the groups one with an interesting call note as the group flew overhead. The call might be described as a rather high pitched tseet or pseet call. There was not anything particularly remarkable looking about this individual but the view was poor, distant and in bad light. Unfortunately this group chose to fly to a distant and inaccessible part of the refuge. Never got a chance to see it on teh ground. Nontheless, it's worth checking through those pipits carefully. Other stuff included 7 species of shorebirds (including 2 Pectoral Sandpipers), the continuing Green Heron, an estimated 280 Cackling Geese (including 1 with some apparent albinism) and 30 Greated White-fronted.
Cheers and good birding...
Bill Shelmerdine
mailto: georn1 at hotmail.com