Today was a rare winter day on the Skagit/Samish Flats. Clear skies, minimal wind, and almost no traffic made for a wonderful day to get out on the flats. First though was the primary excuse for the trip, going to Rosario Head to see if we could find the reported Yellow-billed loon and Rock Sandpiper there. Light traffic and a 6 AM start got us there so early we started the day with a cruise through Fir Island to Hwy 20 and despite no Barn Owls in several barns where Bruce had historically sometimes found them, we had a fruitful early morning, when Ken spotted a high flying Short-eared owl harassing a perched Red-tailed hawk over the North Overlook area. Lots of eagles, a few buteos, quite a few harriers, and lots of swans of both species were other highlights. We found Rosario Head with only minimal trouble, once we found the Rosario Head Road on the Subaru GPS just after passing it on Hwy 20. It is well marked going north, but not going south.
At Rosario Head the most confusion was when Ken and Bruce both announced that they had the bird, despite looking in different directions. It turns out Ken had “the” Rock Sandpiper at the same time Bruce had “the” Yellow-billed Loon. We spent the next hour enjoying great looks at both. Over time the loon moved from maybe 250 yards from the cliff to very close to the beach near the parking lot for great looks. Over the same time the Rock Sandpiper moved from a large rock maybe 100 yards off shore to a smaller rock a bit closer for nice comparison to nearby Black Turnstones. An estimated 250 Red-throated loons as well as a nice variety of alcids, ducks, cormorants and gulls kept us occupied otherwise and we left the area with 39 species.

From there we headed back to the Sammish Flats to see if we could relocate the Falcated Duck and look at raptors, Snow geese, and the rest of the avifauna of the flats area. Raptors other than Bald Eagles, and the usual 2 buteo species, RTHA and RLHA were limited to one Merlin, and a few kestrel. We missed on Peregrine Falcon surprisingly, and found no uncommon raptors. We looked through vast numbers of dabbling ducks, enjoyed the large flock of Snow geese, including one “blue goose” and overall just had fun birding together.

We decided to leave early enough to try for Michael Hobbs’ Northern Mockingbird in Kirkland just before dark, and easily found it at the previously described back yard in the holly tree. Too dark for much of a photo, but this is what I could get.