Hey Tweets!

Kevin Black and I started our Big Year in Lewis County today, birding from Cispus to Boitsfort together. If you have no idea where those towns are, it's going to be a fun year!

We met in Mossyrock at 7 AM or so, both of us trying for owls on the way. Stops and highlights:

Mineral (just me, 5 AM ish? I'm so tired I can't even recall.): Barred Owl
Riffe Lake: a very vocal American Dipper, Western and Horned Grebes
Onalaska: Peregrine Falcon
Chehalis to Boitsfort: 150 or more Trumpeter Swans in two different flocks
(No Tundra for us today!)
Hillburger Pond: Canvasback (a regular spot for them now, it seems)

We ended the day close to sunset, and I left my phone in Kevin's car. I turned around to meet back up with him in Chehalis, and got a Merlin (Code 3) on the offramp. Crawling along I5 from there, I got one more bird for the day, a Great Horned Owl perched along the freeway.

Between us we found 63 species, with a few that I missed and a few that Kevin missed. We will likely go back and laugh at how turned around we were at several points. It's going to be fun getting familiar with the county this year!

I will update the blog at www.Lewiscountybirding.blogspot.com as soon as I've recovered from decision to do this day immediately after doing the Kent-Auburn CBC yesterday... and staying up to midnight with the fam.

Tim Brennan
Renton
Sent from my iPhone