After leaving Snohomish and the Gyrfalcon this afternoon (thank you Rick and Tina for this great find), I drove up to Silvana and headed out Norman Road to look for the Harris's Sparrow reported by Penny Koyama. Once I got oriented to the red barn, and not the white barn where all the starlings and blackbirds were today, I quickly pished the Harris's out of the blackberry brambles, along with a small flock of Towhee, Golden-crowned, Fox, and Lincoln's Sparrows. Thanks for posting this bird, Penny. There was also a Northern Shrike in the vicinity. I found a Peregrine Falcon further along Norman Road and a Kestrel on Boe Road. I could not find a Merlin or the Prairie Falcon so could only make it a three falcon day. It was fun to watch a thousand or more Snow Geese eating and resting on the protected south side of the road while four or five hunters bundled up in their warmest camo clothes looked very bored on the north side. I reached the end of the road and put up my scope just as a hunter and his dog set out to walk the dike to the north of The Nature Conservancy property. Darned if they didn't flush an American Bittern and darned if I didn't enjoy watching it fly for a couple of hundred yards before it disappeared back into the marsh. The bittern was such an unexpected sighting that I'm calling it my best bird today.

Carol Riddell
Edmonds, Wa