On thursday I pulled into the Anchor Pub just in time to hear some beer drinking yahoo tell this story: " I was driving down the road when a hawk flew right in front of my truck. It was being chased by a woodpecker twice as big !". 'Oh sure you did' was the unspoken eye rolling response from the other bar patrons.

In full disclosure I admit that I was that yahoo. Here's what Really Happened: I was driving my truck though Everetts Howarth Park, at my usual slow speed ,when a 'Black' Merlin zipped across the road right in front of me. A second later a Pileated Woodpecker flew by on the same flight path and, in that wonderfull way they do, clamped itself on to a roadside conifer trunk, as the Merlin sailed on.

Was the woodpecker chasing the merlin ? I have no way of knowing.

Digging out my Sibley guide from all the junk in my truck I looked up the two birds. The merlin was truly diminutive - probably a male. So length- wise it was only about half the woodpecker size. Wing span not so much, although the Pileated's wings are much broader. Weight -wise the Pileated might of been twice as big, if Sibley is accurate there. This is where science could really ruin a perfectly good bar story. I decided that the guy in the bar was compleatly accurate. At any rate it was a wonderfully wierd juxtaposition of birds.

Driving home from the Anchor I got to the stoplight at Hewitt and Rucker just as hundreds, maybe a thousand Snow Geese flew overhead aimed straight for Stanwood. It was probably the flock that has been feeding in fields SW of Snohomish all winter moving en masse on their evening commute back north. In a minute they were all past. These goose flyovers have been going on all winter this year in Everett. I did'nt realize that the Snow Geese out in the Snohomish valley roost on saltwater each night and that they go clear back up to Port Susan/Skagit bay each night. (thanks to Martha Jordan for that info).

One of the delights of Spring and Summer evenings at the Anchor Pub is the great screeching racket of Caspian Terns all night long from their evening hangouts down at the nearby Port of Everett. But not this summer. In my grief I was reduced to Poetry. Here's what I wrote:

Quiet Nights

Some things you just can't buy
no matter how much you earns
Quiet nights at the Anchor Pub
since Bellingham stole our Terns


Oh sure, I read all about it in Tweeters - how all the Caspians moved to Bellingham to breed in some fancy parking lot or whatever. "It's not fair" I whined. But after awhile I got over it. Given the choice between staring at the tarmac all night in Everett , or having sex in a safe gated community in Bellingham - well ,the Terns voted with their wings. Hopefully their breeding sucess will mean more Terns for everybody. Sad to hear that the Port up there is probably gonna screw the whole thing up for next year.


Jeff Gibson
The Anchor Pub
1001 Hewitt Ave
Everett Wa

" where beer is nature, too "