Hi Tweeters,

Sorry about the previous prematurely sent message.

This afternoon (12/3/12) at 3 PM I was at the end of Guild Road in the
Woodland bottoms enjoying an aerial display by 2 SHORT-EARED OWLS, 2
NORTHERN HARRIERS, a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK and a few RED-TAILED HAWKS when out
of the corner of my vision I saw 2 shorebirds fly over some long grass and
appear to land behind it. As one of the birds showed lots of white I was
hopeful for my personal county Sanderling record. I eased my car forward
and was rewarded with a DUNLIN and a phalarope about 10 yards away in a
large puddle in the corn stubble. The solid gray back and wings with darker
wing tips - big black patch at the eye and a black back of the head
narrowing to a band of black down the neck - and by phalarope standards a
thick bill that was dark with an orangey base indicated that this was a RED
PHALAROPE. I enjoyed watching this bird forage for about 15 minutes before
it just disappeared while I took a minute to write some notes. I could not
relocate the bird. Checking Washington Birder this appears to be a
first county record and also the final county west of the Cascades to
record this species.

Also of interest today the 75 GREAT EGRETS scattered around the Bottoms was
my high count of the season.

Both the RED-SHOULDERED HAWK at Caples/Vista Roads at Woodland and the one
near the park at Willow Grove were visible today.

Russ Koppendrayer
Longview, WA
russkope at gmail dot com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20121203/ea0e13f1/attachment.htm