Subject: Spencer Island
Date: Feb 15 00:47:41 1996
From: MR HUGH A JENNINGS - GFJC96A at prodigy.com


Twelve of us went birding on Spencer Is. Tues. morning on a
beautiful day. The water was still quite high but a couple of feet below
the level of the cross dike. We saw 39 species. The most interesting
were two tree swallows doing some aerial acrobatics. Two R-t Hawks were
breaking twigs off trees and carrying them to a fir tree to build a nest.
It is in the left of two fir trees north of the gravel access road to the bridge.
In the woods area along Union Slough on the south side of the south
loop trail we saw one yellow bird moving around in the alder trees between
the trail and the slough. These trees also had both Kinglets and B-c
Chickadees. The yellow bird stayed in the mid to upper part of the trees.
We got several good, but short looks at it and the consensus was that it
had to be a female Yellow Warbler. It fit the picture in the NG bird book.
It had an overall yellow appearance with a dark eye in a light yellow head,
the breast and underparts were very yellow. It had no eye ring or eye
stripe. I realize that the YEWA is not supposed to be in this area until
April, but none of the other possibilities fit the description. I hope
that someone else might get there and check it out, assuming it is still there.
Another interesting sighting on the trip was watching two river
otters fishing, and catching, in the pond north of the cross dike.

Hugh Jennings
Bellevue, WA
206-746-6351
gfjc96a at prodigy.com