Driving into Mansfield on Dec 1st, I saw a large falcon in flight - grey
above, white below, way too big for a peregrine and way too heavily built
for a harrier, flying fast and directly. It headed into the town, toward
the pigeons on the grain elevators, but I failed to pick it up again
despite cruising the streets for so long that I thought someone might
report me for stalking.

I think it was almost certainly a gyr. A degree of confirmation came from
the lady running the cafe who had seen something very similar perched by
the road in the evening. She said it was "a big sucker".

Birding on the Waterville Plateau was otherwise a bit slow - plenty of
rough legs, a couple of harriers, a few flocks of horned larks. I checked
the Lamoine owl roost and found no sign of owls (yet again !), but there
was a dead prairie falcon under the trees - it was intact and had no sign
of gunshots, so I wonder how it died.

Driving along Rd 19 NE at around 2 pm, about three miles west of the sage
grouse lek site - a lightly used section of road, with lots of grass down
the middle - I came over a rise and flushed seven sage grouse. They flew a
few yards, landed in a bare field and just looked at me - very different
behavior from the lekking season.

I also went to the Okanogan Highlands in search of the flocks of rosy
finches, Bohemian waxwings, etc, reported by Khanh Tran and others. My day
started well enough with a prairie falcon and several rough legs on
Havillah Road, but in the Highlands proper I found nothing. I drove the
length of Mary Ann Creek Rd, very slowly, and saw not a single bird. I was
wondering whether to put this down to bad luck or plain incompetence when
the car radio announced record high barometric pressure, so I decided the
poor little birds just didn't have the strength to take off.

A golden eagle soaring over Cameron Lake Rd provided some compensation on
the way back.

--
Richard Isherwood
Port Townsend WA
Rjisherwood at gmail.com
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