A field of Snow Geese
(Click photo to enlarge)
Saturday Dec 1 Ken Brown led a group of 20 ABCers on his annual first-weekend-of-December trip to the Skagit and Samish Flats and surrounding areas. Weather smiled on us and we had a dry, not too cold and not very windy day. We met at the Smoky Point rest stop at 7:30 AM and on leaving took the next exit going north to take a back roads route through Snohomish County to get the Fir Island. The order of cars was much out of the ordinary. Diane, Fay and the Willettes usually bring up the rear of any caravan we take on trips, but this trip Diane, Faye and Laurel rode at the front of the line in Ken’s car, and Bruce, Karen, Terry and I took the caboose position. Bruce did all the eBirding for the trip and added the equivalent of an anther expert trip leader, helping make our intimate 5-car, twenty person entourage more manageable.
Male Northern Harrier
We started the day with a bang. At a stop at a home with several feeders Ken and a few others located a White-throated Sparrow under a cedar tree, and we watched good flocks of sparrows. On the next few miles of roads large blackbird flocks gave us chances to look them over hoping for a Rusty Blackbird, and while doing this we spotted a Northern Shrike immature bird perched unusually high on a conifier tree. A Cooper’s Hawk gave perched and fly-by looks, and Trumpeter Swans and Snow Geese flew around. We located at least 2 late-season Brown-headed Cowbirds in one of the blackbird flocks, and then headed for Bow Road in Stanwood.
The Cooper’s Hawk that flew by at an early stop.
This is a dead end road with large wet fields near a dyke, and we spent some time there. We found our first Rough-legged Hawks, a dark Red-tailed Hawk, ? Harlan’s (really far away and tough to be sure so we left is as just a dark morph/Harlan’s, a flock of pipits, an American Kestrel that fooled us flying in doing its best Peregrine imitation, along with eagles, swans, geese, a field full of Killdeer and a few Wilson’s Snipe.
A likely 3rd year Bald Eagle with the Osprey-like head coloration.
A surprisingly quick porcelain stop in Stanwood (it takes time for a line of 20 to make it through) and we were off to Wylie Slough. There we targeted the four rarities that have been being seen there. A disconcerting search by the Sherriff and lots of help for a 2-year old presumed drowned at the boat ramp a day earlier made access awkward, but we managed to find the Black Phoebe first by the boat ramp, then later at the other end of the slough. We failed however in an energetic search for Swamp Sparrow, American Tree Sparrow and Northern Waterthrush. We managed a good list though, an had really good looks at male and female Northern Harriers, lots of Bald Eagles, Cooper’s Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, along with large numbers of American Robins, Cedar Waxwings and various finches that were devouring a really good crop of fruit from the trees beside the dyke trail.
March Wrens kept us busy hoping one of the birds moving in the bushes would be one of the rarities we sought at Wylie Slough.
A quick stop at Hayden Preserve added Long-billed Dowicher, Greater Yellowlegs, and Least Sandpipers (these by only a few observers) along with big numbers of dabbling ducks.
Black Phoebe
We spent the rest of the afternoon driving through the Skagit anmayd then the Samish Flats looking primarily for raptors. We had good numbers of RLHA, RTHA, and BAEA, along with remarkable numbers of Northern Harriers. Amazingly we did not find any Peregrine Falcons nor Merlin, leaving us with a surprising one-falcon species day (American Kestrel). We planned to end the day at the West 90 looking for Short-eared Owls, and a couple of us got a brief glimpse of one SEOW flying very far away back toward the East 90. As darkness fell, Ken hurried us over to the East 90 curve where we manage to get off the road enough to get out and look for the owls. Just as light failed us Bruce spotted one SEOW fairly distant, but everyone got looks. As we watched that owl, another appeared much closer and proceeded to fly back and forth, before flying right at us and crossing the road quite nearby. A great end to a very nice day.
Numbers:
79 Species of birds
14 species of waterfowl
6 species of shorebirds
Many thousands of Snow Geese
3 Short-eared Owls
0 Peregrine Falcons and Merlins, so 1 species of Falcon.
19 tired and happy ABCers who enjoyed another of Ken’s patented trips.
Good Birding.
Ed Pullen