Hey all!

Blog's not up yet (graaading to catch up on before winter break), but the trip to Skamania over the weekend with Wilson Cady was the last piece of my goal to get a year list of 39 birds in all 39 counties this year to celebrate still being 39! Barring a redpoll showing up at my feeder, I think I found my last year bird - the Canyon Wren that I tried to find at Beacon Rock back in July. This one was previously a heard-only for my life list, so it was nice to see that the things that make Canyon Wren sounds also do indeed look like wrens! It was a lot of fun to finish things up with Jon, Nina, Les and Wilson with the Big Day.

The number 39 was a very good manageable goal for the year, as it turned out. I'd totally suggest something similar to anyone that feels like they want to get a good start on birding across the state. There's still a lot of places I want to get to, or get back to, and certainly a lot of birds I haven't seen, even though the year list was bigger than my life list in the state at the start of the year!

While the blog will be wrapped up when I'm done getting these last few posts up, I'll leave it up for future reference (apologies for the obsession with varied thrushes, any typos I may have missed, and for the caption which reads "insert caption here"... I figure I should leave that as-is to ensure that the blog accurately reflects my technological skill set.)

Thanks to all of you who responded to email inquiries and especially to those who I had a chance to bird with this year!

Happy birding!

-Tim Brennan
www.39counties.blogspot.com