Tweeters,

Would experienced tweeters care to share identification techniques for
infrequently seen spring migrant passerines?

This morning I spent a half-hour before coming to work looking for
migrants in the ravine behind my Seattle home. I found a Wilson's warbler,
two ruby-crowned kinglets, one (!) bushtit (must be nesting?), and a
couple of difficult (i.e. new to me) to identify passerines. They were all
actively (if not frantically) feeding in a hawthorne in flower, and the
neighboring hazelnut.

The toughies were probable:
1) warbling vireo - short stout beak, white eye-brow with a brownish
crown, undertail coverts that extended near to the *end* of the short
tail, overall brownish appearance in the cloudy 6am light, brown eye,
buff colored chest.
2) Western-slope flycatcher - small brown bird, broad base on a stout
beak, at least a partial eye-ring, otherwise very drab, feeding style was
more of a foliage gleaning for the few glimses I had of it.

Thanks in advance for shared wisdom.


Nobody wanted to sing or call this morning, so there was no help from
vocalizations.
Michael Patrick
mpatrick at eldec.com
(206)743-8204