Dear Tweeters,
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Today I decided once again to try to match the?mark of 94 species for a day's birding in Skagit County during November. Whoever it was who hit that mark in the first place, my hat is off to you.
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The birding gods were very kind to me, but not that kind; they continued to smile upon me until I matched the mark of 94, and then they?shut me down!
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Anyway, it was a great day. Upriver, there were American Dippers at quite a few spots. In the river just west of Concrete was my first Barrow's Goldeneye of the season. Other tough birds upriver included a Sharpie in Concrete, an American Goldfinch and a White-crowned Sparrow in Grassmere, and a drake Gadwall at the Van Horn Ponds.
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Perhaps the most surprising bird of the day was a Ruffed Grouse in the woods along the edge of Butler Flats, less than a mile and a half from I-5. That was the first Ruffed Grouse I'd seen in western Skagit County in a long time.
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The Yellow-headed Blackbirds were nowhere to be seen on Samish Flats, and neither were the Savannah Sparrows, but there were lots of other birds out there, including a Short-eared Owl, a Cooper's Hawk, an American Pipit, and so on.
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Samish Island Public Beach (the DNR park) was surprisingly birdy, despite the high tide. There were a couple of Harlequin Ducks, lots of Oldsquaws, and most of the other expected birds. I was surprised to see the White-winged Scoters outnumbering the Surf Scoters by quite a bit. I have not yet found any Brant this season, though.
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Fir Island was where my luck started getting so good that I was wondering if I should quit birding and buy a lottery ticket. First, I found?an American Kestrel less than a minute before it flew into the trees to roost for the night. Then, at North Fork Access, an American Bittern flew up from the marsh. Next I raced over to Jensen Access, where five Black-bellied Plover spent five minutes flying back and forth in front of me.
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At Hayton Reserve, it was so dark that I had a hard time figuring out what I was looking at, but the voices of the Cackling Geese carried over just fine in the dark. Eventually I was able to discern them, standing around next to the "honking-big" Snow Geese (pun intended).
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I pulled into the Game Range at 1705, well after sunset, and found a pair of calling Great Horned Owls immediately--species number ninety-four on the nose! One of them flew right over my head for a grand finale.
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Instead of going out for a celebratory burrito, I raced up to Harry Osborne State Forest near Hamilton, where I spent the next hour and a half or so, walking five miles in the darkness, and not finding the Saw-whet Owl or the Barred Owl that would have put me at ninety-five. I should have had the burrito. The way my luck had been going up to that point, it would not have been all that surprising if a West Mexican Chachalaca had flown up and landed on the salsa bar. That's the way it goes.
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Big misses today included Lesser Scaup, American?Coot, Common Murre, Marbled Murrelet, and?Downy Woodpecker. Actually, they aren't big misses--there isn't enough daylight in November to get to all the places one wants to bird.
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Yours truly,
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Gary Bletsch