Herb Curl noted:

> Puget Sound Notes (Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, PO Box 40900,
> Olympia, WA 98504-0900.) This November issue (Special Wetlands Edition)
> also describes the history of the North Creek wetlands, east of Bothell.

I'll have to read this! While I worked at Eldec's "North Creek" site I learned
that they "improved" their unused parking lot to avoid having it catagorized
as a wetlands under some sort of impending regulatory changes. The validity
of this urban myth may be tested now ;-)

They did a good job preserving much wetlands in that area, once you accept
that they decided to develop there at all (at times I feel that wetlands
are *targeted* by developers - there is so much land available in the cities
these days, why keep trashing natural areas????). There were ponds on both
the Eldec and ATL sites, and the creek was free flowing - even if it was
forever constrained to the bed it was using when the area was developed.

The Eldec pond often had 1-3 bufflehead and an occassional common merganser
in the winter; and the ubiquitous Canada geese so succesfully nested there that
the facilities manager decided their poop constituted a health hazard and
chased them off by stringing up mylar tape around the parking lot and
lawn area (e.g. by removing their foraging territory).

Killdeer were regulars, and great-blue herons roosted in the surrounding
evergreens. I do miss seeing the misty silhoette of a GBHE atop a 60' fir.

We once had a window-kill Canada goose (they were the type of windows that
automatically became shaded in the sunlight, must have been early in a
morning); I heard that it was a spectacular crash - poor goose.

Thanks for the reference! It sure is great to learn about these things.

--
Michael Patrick - Staff Engineer
University of Washington, Radiation Oncology, Box 356043
1959 NE Pacific St.
Seattle, WA. 98195
mike at radonc.washington.edu
(206) 548-4536