With the departure of this winter's Snowy Owls, I decided to spend my day today (Sunday) looking to the recent past ---
I began the day with a run out to Ocean Shores. The owls gone, Damon Point was largely deserted. I wandered the debris and soon was able to pick up several pellets -- my target for the day. I opened up several and found nothing that was immediately identifiable. They almost seemed to be composed of mechanical parts?? One, however, did hold a collection of small white feathers?..
Moving up to Whatcom county and then Boundary Bay, I solved one of the big mysteries of the day. Though some contained the same confusing mechanical parts, the majority of pellets examined clearly held the bones of Black-capped Chickadees -- it seemed almost as if these Snowy Owls were protecting the San Juans and Vancouver Island from invasion. Interesting!

I zoomed over to Okanogan County for my next stop, where as expected after a bit of searching I was able to turn up the telltale pellet evidence -- a few rosy feathers and rotting deer meat in an old pellet clearly proved the end-game of a famous gull that I'd missed.

Final stops in Benton County were most tragic -- several starved Snowy Owls remained on site. It seems, no matter how plentiful the supply of Eurasian Collared-Doves, even hungry Snowy's could not be convinced to feast on an introduced species.

On reflection, the mechanical bits found at Ocean Shores and Boundary Bay seemed most likely to be bits and pieces of cameras -- a good reminder of what can happen when those big lenses get a little too close.

All in all a good day of birding through a winter's worth of memories on a rainy day.

Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA