Rudy and I had seen a belted kingfisher while we were biking on Dec. 31. Hoping to add him to our list for 2012 we went back to the same place, but no kingfisher. Disappointing. To try to see him you go west off of the Interurban trail in Auburn, WA at Emerald Downs and go out to Hwy 167. We did see some Mallards (#2) swimming around in a cow pasture pond and some Crows (#3) flying around hit and miss. Crows really don't seem to have much order but I love to watch them walk and you can easily have a conversation with them when their looking down on you from a lamp pole. Since the kingfisher was not going to show we drove down to GRNRA and walked to the northern most birding tower. There was nothing around except bunches of Canadian Geese (#4) flying in constantly changing formations in the sky. The sky was dark but there was sun shining on them flying up so high—the perfect lighting highlighted their beauty. When we were walking back from the tower we saw what I thought at first was a hawk. He was flying so low over the area, hunting. We were able to watch him awhile and then he landed on a wetlands sign where we got a nice view through the binocs. He was a Northern Harrier (#5) with that reddish brown color and distinctive white bar at the top of his tail. He was something to see and we got a nice show from him. That was worth the drive and made a nice end to the birding day.
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