Coffee lovers,

I have had the pleasure over the last month and a half to be engaged in
the regular monitoring of frog breeding activities in some flooded pastures
southwest of Tumwater, Washington in the Black River drainage. One
pasture I park next to has had a very dependable bird community composed
of Greater Yellowlegs (about 8 of them), Mew Gulls (about 30), Shovelers
(about 6), Green-winged Teal (about 6), and numerous other waterfowl
(Canada Geese, Mallards, Widgeon, Pintail). I am still not very confident
with my sandpipers so I have to guess that the flock of 100 or so shorebirds
are either Dunlin or Western Sandpipers (my scope was stolen from my truck two
weekends ago so I have difficulty looking carefully at the curvature of the
bill tip). There was a Kestrel hanging around here in early February.

I slog around in a different field and listen to the near constant chatter of
Marsh Wrens. I have heard a Bittern a couple of times and last Sunday, as I
approached a large aggregation of frog spawn, I flushed a Bittern from the
dense sedges a few meters from the frog eggs (I wander what that bird had
been doing there :( .......

Mallards are present in large numbers. Snipe are less numerous but I enjoy
the occasional flushing of a pair here and there. Red-tailed hawks nest nearby
and I see them regularly. Last year I found a partially expanded frog egg mass
at the base of a fence post that also had pellets with vole remains underneath
it. I wondered if a red-tailed hawk had taken a female frog and eaten it while
perched on the post, dropping the distasteful (perhaps) eggs to the ground
where they began to expand by absorbing moisture from the air and soil.
I have also heard Great horned Owls at this site so maybe the owl is the
culprit.

Not much else of note. Red-winged blackbirds are present in good numbers and
I have seen several Tree Swallows in the last week or so. Yuppie Bald Eagles
have a nest along the road I travel going to and from the site. I saw both
birds near the nest last week.

I saw both adult and downy Virginia Rails at this site last year. I hope to
see them again. The amphibians at the site are a great fascination for me
but the birds are worth looking up for now and then.

Kelly McAllister
Olympia, Washington