Greetings over this 3-day weekend with no sun in sight!

On a leisurely bird survey, Nov 09, 1996 at the Des Moines, WA marina,
beach park and surrounding area, the following were noted:

It was an "instruments-only" boating day, but people were still
going out across the shipping lanes. Not being a boater, I
considered them to be a bit nutty! Walking visibility was down to
50 meters at times, but sightings were great. A small group of
killdeer visited the beach briefly then moved on south. Since my
early Nov report, several common loons have joined the wintering
crowd. Also new was a single male bufflehead, and an apparent
returnee-our lone female common merganser is again amongst the
hoards of mallards. Like last season, she exhibited incessant and
fussy grooming behavior compared to the gulls, mallards, coots,
wigeons, and half-bred geese around her. A search in the
literature (Bent's mentioned this) indicated that near-constant
grooming, feather shuffling, and scratching are characteristic in
common mergansers. Are mergansers more prone to mites, fleas,
sensitivity to water pollution, stress from crowding, etc. than
other water-habitat birds?

While walking up the trail of the old Seattle/Des Moines highway
on the north side of the beach park, had the delightful and
infrequent experience of being surrounded by hundreds of small birds in
the trees and bushes. Most of these were ruby-crowned kinglets
with many of the males displaying crowns; I have never seen so
many r-c kinglets in one place at one time! Others in this large
group and in the surrounds were.....golden-crowned kinglets, both
chestnut-backed and black-capped chickadees, "Oregon" variety of the
dark-eyed junco, two male downy woodpeckers, stellar's jay,
red-shafter flicker, spotted towhee, song sparrow (this species
seems to be declining in the immediate area), a tag-along
sharp-shinned hawk and a very crow-spooked croaking great blue
heron. Speaking of crows...........................

The local crow community of 200-300 displayed a kind of madness in
the fog. I kept watching them hoping they would point to a
roosting hawk or owl. Not to be; do crows mob each other when
there is nothing else to bother??? Their behavior was quite
spooky in the fog. They would abruptly rise with great clamor from the
tree tops and swirl chaotically, then settle again and repeat the same
response. It was quiet and still in the fog; the crow's instant
and loud noises-beyond the typical cawing-were so alarming that a
lot of people visiting the marina and park were looking up! The
crows were acting frightened, but from what?

It's Sunday, midday, and the fog is still dense........headed down to the
marina to see what else has shown up or is reportable.

Till then,

Maureen E. Ellis, me2 at u.washington.edu, Univ of WA and Des Moines, WA