Hey Tweets!

Two new birds for the year list today in the rainiest day I've spent in Mason County. I started in the southeast corner of the county looking for Rough-legged Hawks in intermittent showers with no luck. I took it all the way up to Matlock and back down Shelton-Matlock Road to Little Egypt Road, which was flooded, but had some very vocal Virginia Rails.

I grabbed lunch in Shelton then ran after a pheasant reported to me by a friend near Mason Lake. I missed it, but got to drive parts of the county I hadn't visited yet, before coming down to Hood Canal and finding bird #179 at the mouth of the Skokomish: a Eurasian Wigeon drake.

Hunter Farms was a Lake. The Skokomish Valley was a lake. Hood Canal had some nice numbers of winter birds, but the final one of the day: Ring-necked Pheasant, heard-only at Theler. Couldn't have been more magnificent than that to put it over the old record! Lol.

Headed home to dry off.

Tim Brennan
Renton

Www.masoncountybirding.blogspot.com