I always appreciate the help more experienced birders give us newer ones on

Tweeters. Now it's my turn to ask a question.

Today I birded Juanita Bay Park for the first time. What a great place!
But I saw a bird that's got me stumped. Only caught a glimpse of it as it
flew
away from me, very close to the water in a marshy area. It's body was maybe

12-18 inches long, slender looking with a long neck and had long legs that
dangled behind as it flew, and was mostly black on top, and had what I
thought
was a very fluffed out black topknot on it's head. It flew to a beaver
lodge and
disappeared. I was not able to locate it again.

The closest I can come in any of my books is a black necked stilt. But the
books also say they are only east of the mountains (which is the only place

I've ever seen them before.)

Any theories?

In case anyone's interested, I also saw:
Immature bald eagle
Osprey
Several great blue herons
3 belted kingfishers, 1 adult feeding fledglings
Pied billed grebes nesting, 2 building, 1 sitting
Marsh wren
Goldfinch
Downy woodpecker fledglings
Tree and barn swallows
Bushtits
Cedar waxwings (looked like fledglings)
Coots nesting
Heard a Virginia rail
and of course mallards, gadwalls, Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds

Christy Anderson
Bellevue, WA
christya at gte.net