EIKI and SNOW

What a great bigby, albeit a very windy one. I walked down to the Art Museum to see if I could catch the King Eider. Thanks to Chuck Hegner, I found the Eider, a first year male. . Quite amazing to see him ( the Eider, not Chuck) steaming toward me like a troop ship,quite broad in the beam. We watched in amazement to see the Eider swallow a clump of Qahog mussels, shell and all. After watching for a while, I walked to Lakeshore State Park to see if I could catch some snow buntings. I was alerted by the noisy mobbing of crows and found a Snowy Owl on the rocks adjacent to the piers in the first lagoon. The rest of the park was quiet and battened down due to the strong winds. When I turned north to return home, I was amazed at the strength of the wind and had great fun fighting it until I got to the bike path. On the bike path I saw an immature Cooper's Hawk with a black band on its left leg, and an aluminum band on the right.

On another note, I would be much closer to Tim if I had not been so kind to tell him in exquisite detail where to find the birds. It really rankled that he got back to the computer to record the two before I did.

R. Squier