Had a great day in stanwood/camano island on saturday the 31st. To whomever was asking about the hunters. Yes duck hunters usually hunt first thing in the morning as that is the best time to hunt waterfowl because they are moving from their roosts to????? To avoid hunters afternoons are usually lacking in their presence. Though legal hunting hours are from 1/2 hr before sunrise to sunset. Also I have seen the snowys in stanwood twice and their were no hunters close to them. Remember not all hunters are gun swinging rednecks, we are conservationists first and a lot of money from licenses, stamps, and tags goes toward the habitat preservation which benefits not only game species but all species using the areas.
On to my birding report. Went by Edie road first walked the perimiter. Had many dunlin, yellow legs and a few small sandpipers (western/least). Lots of gulls flying. Swans and snow geese. Ducks I could ID included pintail, mallard, bufflehead and wigeon a few divers on the salt that were distant and a few cormorants. Also pied billed and other (western)grebe.Short eared owls (5?) northern harriers, redtail hawk, merlin, perigrine (hunting dunlin), and possible gyrfalcon ... This guy was a bit far for anything but a sillouhtte but it looked a bit more robust than a perigrine but I am not counting it as a "life bird" because not a sure ID. Roughlegged hawks both light and dark and very vocal. GB heron and an ammerican bittern. Oh and bc chickadee, house finch, starling and crow.

Went over to tholme rd to look for snowys, Many swans in fields. after parking with the other birders I saw a roughlegged hawk harassing a harrier, harrier dropped its prey and as 1 rough legged went to grab it another rough legged swooped in, the two hawks locked talons, spun at least twice, and 1 of them left the other got the prey.....super cool... Ravens and gulls around, saw 1 snowy but due to time constraints couldn't stay long enough to find any others. All the snowys I have seen have been sitting on drift wood over the dike. You could probably scope them from the edie road side and might be able to see more of them, I was told there were as many as four of them out there. At least 3 roughlegged hawks along dike, 1 red tail, more dunlin, many harriers. As I was walking back to the car a short eared owl was fluttering along an irrigation ditch and as it reached tholme rd it got harassed by an american kestrel! little fella chased away the owl, power play by the little guy! Beautiful male falcon sitting on the wires along the road. If the falcon i saw at the edie wdfw area was a gyr, that would make this a 4 falcon day! No accipiter hawks, 2 owls sp. and 2 bueto hawk sp. Oh there was a bald eagle on the drive over from edie rd. What a raptory end of the year!
Dan Lipinski
dano135 at hotmail,com