Folks,

Seen over the weekend (Saturday, March 16) were:

(1) A fairly good wave of ruby-crowned kinglets in the tree tops of Des
Moines Beach Park with few chestnut backed chickadees and a lone
yellow-rumped warbler. Common bushtits have paired up. The GBH "rookery"
appears to now have two occupied nests in a large pine on the north slope
of the park! Last year one nest fledged two youngsters.

(2) A crowd of red-necked grebes have appeared with a few coloring up;
we had none of this species over-wintering this season........strange.
We also have a great increase in numbers of rhino auklets around the
fishing pier.

There are still a bunch of surf scoters plus a few
white-wingeds around, but many appear to have dispersed. A second
pelagic cormorant recently joined our single wintering visitor, and both of
these moved on; the double-crested cormorants are still hanging around. The
wintering eared grebe has also left. There have been no marbled
murrelets in the area during the past several weekends that I
have surveyed.

(3) I have hung out a hummingbird feeder as have other people in the
area, but haven't seen any yet; perhaps those living away from the
waterfront winds see them earlier and more frequently. As of this
morning (March 19), we are still waiting for our swallows also. I saw
violet-green and tree swallows way-north at the Reifel Sanctuary in
BC on Saturday, March 9, and many other local reports are being posted.

More will be posted when seen and reasonably interesting.

Maureen E. Ellis___me2 at u.washington.edu___Des Moines WA, USA