Hello Tweeters,
Third time is the charm for seeing the Gryfalcon outside of the town of Snohomish. But the first two times looking for the bird, it was so foggy we couldn't see 100 yards, this time we could actually see. We got to the "white house" about 2:30 pm today and were told by a local that the falcon had headed north and had not been seen for a while. We pulled over on the road just west of the house and started looking around. There were several thousand Snow Geese in a field just to the north of us but were hard to see from where we were parked. They were amazingly calm in spite of all the Bald Eagles that were in the area. At one time, we saw 7 Bald Eagles and 2 Red-tailed Hawks soaring over the geese. As we continued to look around, we saw at least a dozen Red-tailed Hawks and as many Bald Eagles. We also found a distant N Shrike, several N Harriers and a Cooper's Hawk.
As we were about to pack it in, my wife, Carleen, saw a gray shape in a distant tree to the north of us. We got the scopes on it and had ourselves pretty much convinced that we were looking at the Gyr. Not feeling totally convinced, we headed down the road some more where we were able to get a much better look at the bird. It was indeed the Gyr. We got some nice looks at the bird from our vantage point.
We celebrated with beers and pizza at Trails End Pub in Snohomish.

Neil Zimmerman
Brier, WA