Miscellaneous Items - 2/9/09

Illahee Website. The Illahee website was established for the Illahee community to have ready access to local issues and events, and to be able to communicate with each other.

Blog Site Established. The communication vehical is via a blog site, which is something the younger generation is more familar. We have had the blog site up for some time but the useage has been limited.

Website Advisory Committee Decision. There is an Illahee Community Website Advisory Committee that met last fall and suggested the Community Updates be linked to the blog site.

Why Do This? That was the question and the answer is that it allows others to quickly respond to any of the Updates and everyone can see the responses.

How Does It Work? The other day we put out an Update mentioning owls, and we ended up getting two great responses back. We haven't gotten them back out in an Update, but if they had sent them in as comments to the Update, they would have been available to anyone who wanted to look at them right away.

Illahee Community Club Meeting on Valentines Day. The Illahee Community Club will hold its first quarterly meeting of 2009 on Valentines Day, February 14, 2009 from 1:30 - 3 pm, at the Sylvan Way library. This is an important meeting as they discuss an Illahee Community Advisory Council that would report to the Kitsap County Commissioners, the status of the Replacement Illahee Outfall, whether to appeal the anticipated appeal rejection by the Hearing Examiner of the Timbers Edge project, and the status of the Illahee Creek culvert that continues to fill with sediment, and possibly other issues.

Illahee Owls. We received the following report of Illahee owls a few weeks ago:

Last night around 6:15, during our weekly pickle ball match, we heard this continuous very loud high pitched hooting to the Southwest near Sunset Ave or Hicks Street. Then we all noticed the back and forth series of hooting coming closer and to our amazement two Barred Owls flew right over the house and pickle ball court, 20-25 feet off the ground, hooting at each other as they flew. One was trailing the other by about 12 feet. At first, I thought there may have been more than just the two, but this is all we clearly viewed. The two owls flew toward the east and perched in some trees near East Blvd. They continued their hooting for another 45 minutes. Last year a barred owl perched in an alder tree watching our pickle ball match for nearly three hours in the bright court light. The owls seemed to be curious of the fast moving pickle ball.

March 12th Owl Presentation. Kitsap Audubon speaker for March 12th was covered in the following Seattle Time's article on Jan 29, 2009:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2008682771_nwwowls290.html