[obol] Artic Loon

[DON SHARON HALLER]

The afternoon of December 30th the Artic Loon was still west of the bridge 
in Brownsmead. In addition, we saw a small flock of cackling geese, several 
flocks of Canada geese, several great blue herons, many pintails, gadwalls, 
mallards, a few widgeons, scaups, blue winged teal, bufflehead, hooded 
mergansers, Clark's grebes, pie billed grebes, four swans, five redtail 
hawks (dark morph) (four of which were having a territory dispute along the 
dike at the end of Bughole Road), two mature bald eagles, numerous flocks of 
dark eyed juncos, American Robins, song sparrows.

Puzzling were the flocks of small shorebirds, which I think were either 
Western or semi-palmated Sandpipers. The distance made identification 
difficult.  There were about a half dozen larger waders visible also which I 
think were probably Dunlin, but again the distance made identification 
difficult.

We also discovered a recently dead fox(?) right at the cable gate at the end 
of Bughole Road.

Sharon Haller
Astoria, Oregon