On Sunday evening (9/23) Randy Robinson found a Boreal Owl north of
Rainy Pass, the latest addition to Skagit County's bird list (see
eBird). On Tuesday evening Michael Willison and I hiked north along
the Pacific Crest Trail from Rainy Pass to try our luck. After the
first two hours we had found no indication of any owl, but soon after
we heard a loud call very close to us. After it flew in low over our
heads we spotted the owl on a branch above us. I had good views in
the light so was able to tell it was a Boreal Owl! It called a few
more times nearby and we saw it in flight again. We spent another
couple hours trying to see if we could find any more without any luck,
though we did find 5-6 Northern Saw-whet Owls. Last September I spent
an evening owling in the same area and found three Northern Saw-whets
and a Northern Pygmy-Owl.

While owling I was recording using the voice memo feature on my cell
phone. I deleted most of the recordings right away after not hearing
any owls, but since I was recording when the Boreal Owl came in I was
able to get decent recordings of its calls. I feel this feature is
under-utilized by many birders, but it is a great way to document bird
songs and calls and works surprisingly well as long as the bird is
somewhat close. It's also very useful to work on figuring out the
different Red Crossbill call types. If anyone wants a copy of the
Boreal Owl calls I'd be happy to email them.

The other big highlight from the trip was a juvenile dark-morph
Broad-winged Hawk that Michael and I were able to watch in flight for
more than ten minutes yesterday afternoon near the Corkindale Creek
crossing of Highway 20, just west of Marblemount.

A couple pictures of it can be found here:
www.flickr.com/photos/rjm284/8030496891/

Other highlights from a couple fun days of birding included six
White-throated Sparrows in Rockport (five of which were together on
Martin Road), a somewhat late Willow Flycatcher and MacGillivray's
Warbler, and two Black Bears.

Good birding,
Ryan Merrill
Kirkland