Hi tweeters,
Lovely warm sunshine out there today. One of the advantages of
teaching for a living is that occasionally you can get outside in the
middle of the day (in between quarters, at least). I spent 15 minutes
under a group of white birches (?--couldn't find the spot listed in
Jacobson's Trees of Green Lake), listening to what sounded like 10-15
loudly chattering goldfinches right overhead, and looking in vain to spot a
single one. It's both frustrating and enchanting that a tree can seem full
of birds without even one being seeable! Finally I spotted two and moved on.
I find it interesting that we humans, being the visual creatures
we are, often feel we must *see* a bird to have experienced it. Just
hearing it isn't as satisfying somehow. Are any of you good enough at
birding-by-ear to feel completely happy only hearing one?
A double-crested cormorant and two immature gulls were hanging out
by one of the Bathhouse floats. For a few minutes, the birds seemed to be
trying to impress each other with the number of wing flaps each could do
while floating: the cormorant flapped 13 times, then ducked its head, then
shivered its feathers. One of the gulls would do a similar routine, then
the cormorant again. It seemed to be more than bathing. Is this familiar
behavior?
After seeing only about 4 swallows per evening for a few days, the
first day of spring yesterday brought perhaps 30 at dusk, swirling above
the western shore. A perched one this afternoon turns out to be a tree
swallow.
Finally, my treat for the afternoon was a yellow-rumped warbler in
the shoreline trees south of the Bathhouse. At least that's what I think
it was, since it's my first: distinct yellow spot on rump (sounds pretty
species-distinctive!), gray-brown head with spotty eye-ring like robin's,
warbler-sized, relatively short thin sharp black beak, buff chest with smudgy
vertical streaks, paler yellow spot under chin, brown back/wings with some
white bars.
No grebes active today, but I'll keep checking...

Trileigh Stroh

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home: Green Lake
work: Ecological Studies program, Seattle University
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