Caught a lucky break on weather on Sunday and
ventured up to the Samish flats area. Mostly
looking for the Short Eared Owls but spent the day
driving the farm roads seeing what was around with
a number of trips back to the parking lot at the
West 90 to seek the owls. Highlights were MANY
eagles, MANY harriers, large flocks of widgeon
that when carefully scanned yielded at least a
dozen Eurasians including two separate flocks that
had two luminous red headed males right next to
each other, some large flocks of dunlin with black
bellied plovers and willets mixed in, two great
peregrines including one that posed for a long
while in a fallow flooded field and FINALLY at
dusk some very active short ears in the fields
south and a bit west of the parking area. Of the
probably 20 plus harriers it was interesting that
only 3 were males. Anomaly or regular?

Pictures can be found at
https://picasaweb.google.com/103072475474183849815/SamishFebruary132011#.