Monday, September 12, 1966 Jim Lynch, Jim and Barrie Blattau, Marty, Catherine Abbotts Lagoon in Sonoma Co.: flushed up an owl by the outside gate, the size of a burrowing owl; it flew off about 100 yds. to the south, lit down again in tall lupin where we couldn't see it; we flushed it up again, it flew and lit again. Fairly sure it was a burrowing owl, too big for a screech owl, too small for anything like a spotted owl. It was brownish. Although we didn't see it very plainly, we assume that's what it was. We came back to the gate and there were pellets by the fence- post that had lots of insect exoskeletons around that makes it look as if that bird was using the fencepost as a perch and feeding there. There are thousands of grasshoppers around; the vegetation is quite dry now; also yellowjackets; the fern tips are all dried up; the lupin is fairly dry and low, etc. Assume he was eating the grasshoppers. Also there was a dead Savannah Sparrow under a log there among other things. The head was cut off, looked like the owl had killed the bird and stored it under there temporarily. Under some of the logs alligator lizards were found; Jim Lynch collected about 5 of them. At Lagoon itself: bird life doesn't look too abundant, not like last year. But there are some ducks on the east side at least, and on the west side there are some ducks and probably some gulls roosting there. We've seen numerous avocets already on this one side, along with some drab looking ducks which we haven't yet identi- fied. We'll walk around to see. We've seen some godwits and possibly curlew around there. Out over the Lagoon itself we saw a falcon-sized bird; it was flying up and down, down near the water and back up in sort of a rolling; reminded me of a