Dear Tweeters,
Since it has been raining in the Skagit Valley today, the twenty-eighth of May, I figured it would be a good day to risk vehicular mayhem and drive upriver, into the teeth of the holiday traffic. Despite a continuing series of showers, heavy at times, birding was pretty good.?
At Martin Road was a YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT, singing away. I had figured that this bird would not come back to Martin Road, since people had removed all the blackberry tangles from the shoreline west of the WDFW access. The chat has indeed come back, although not to its former haunt. It was a few hundred meters from there, where a creek crosses Martin Road just south of the access.
Even more surprising was an out-of-habitat GREY FLYCATCHER at Barnaby Slough. This bird was at the west end of the site, where a low chain-link fence borders a former fish-rearing pond with a couple of outbuildings near it.
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch ??