Tweets,

Today late afternoon I stopped at Thomle Rd about 3:30 PM just as 2 other
cars with birders were leaving. I scanned to the southwest were they
appeared to have been looking and immediately spotted 2 white blobs. After
setting up my spotting scope in fading light I convinced myself that there 2
adjacent Snowy Owls (SnoOwl) near some white posts and possibly two more
even farther out in the field. At this point I got distracted by another
owl flying around, literally through my scope view. I pulled up my
binoculars and while very quick it appeared that a Short-eared Owl (ShEaOw)
had buzzed one of the distant Snowy blobs. But perhaps even more surprised
than the distant ShEaOw identified only by dark color and long-winged,
bobbing flight, was a second ShEaOw hunting much closer to the road and
easily identified with binoculars. As I continued to scan northwest toward
Eide Rd. in that huge tundra-sized field I spotted 2 more ShEaOw hunting and
then later a ShEaOw dive bombed a second sitting on a post. Finally when I
scanned back to the small area with the SnoOwls, one was flying around
hunting (bigger, whiter and less bobbing than the ShEaOw), and I surmised
that it was one of the previous distant blobs as the 2 closer, more obvious
SnoOwl were still sitting there. While it was getting dark there was also
at least 2 ShEaOw flying around that part of the field, so if you are trying
to keep count, I believe there were probably 4 SnoOwl and at least 4 ShEaOw
for some of my best owl watching south of Boundary Bay BC. Also how about
those 6 letter acronoyms that when CamelCased are actually easy 2 read.
Happy Thanksgiving!



Bob Schmidt, Bothell, WA

bobs at world hyphen wide dot com