Hello all,
It is a bright, sunny, crystal-blue-sky, BALMY (November??!!) Sunday here
in the Des Moines Marina area. Birds spotted include:

About 125 scoters of which 15 are White-winged and the rest Surf;
Dozens of Horned grebes;
A few Red-necked grebes, perhaps 5 or 6;
Numbers of Western grebes could be seen, a few close in, out in the Sound
most anywhere you looked;
At least one Pied-billed grebe;

A single Pigeon guillemot;

3 Killdeer foraging at water's edge on the beach;

13 Mew, 3 California, 1 Boneparte's and hodgepodge of up to 200
Glaucous-winged-a few maybe pure Western-plus associated hybrid gulls;

3 Great Blue herons;

A half dozen Double-crested cormorants;

Up to 75 American wigeon were seen this morning (there can be as many as
300 on some days), but no Eurasian have been spotted yet;
Flotillas of near 50 Barrows and about 10 Common goldeneyes;
The usual resident 50+ Mallards and 5 domestic geese (two Canada hybrids);

Wrens-2 Winter (the first I've seen this year);
Up to 5 Song sparrows, 1 alarm-calling Spotted towhee, a flying
red-shafted morph of the Northern flicker, numbers of early-morning-
sunlight-basking Robins, high-pitched calls of unseen Golden-crowned
kinglets........the woodlands of the beach park were slow birding this AM.
Seen flying overhead, though, was a flock of about 20 birds with all the
'jizz' of Evening grosbeaks! They are seen here in yards infrequently in
recent years.

And our probably near 300 resident Crows doing their usual daily routine;

A poignant, but-turned-out-OK, incident occurred on the fishing pier this
morning. A fisherman hooked an immature Rhinocerous auklet. The hook had
impaled through the facial skin between the beak and the eye. The little
Alcid was feisty and, of course, not happy about being restrained to have
the one barb of the 3-barbed hook clippered to slip it out of the bird's
face.

The wound was bleeding but looked superficial. And the auklet did not go
into shock (though I have had a personal experience with a young Western
meadowlark dying in hand after being "rescued."); it remained struggling
and defiant. The auklet had a lot of human help and sympathy to save it,
and after it was freed on the edge of the pier, it immediately plopped
into the Sound, bathed itself, swam off a bit, and appeared to start
foraging again.

The fisherman was so distressed at hooking the bird, that he called it a
day. He said it had happened before; at least, he could save this one.
The auklet seemed OK after it was freed. I have seen drowned grebes
tangled in fishing-line-pollution under the water around the pier.
There are always a number of grebes, scoters, and auklets foraging close
to the end of pier; it's good fishing for them too, but there is a
conflict of fishing technique and technology here. Perhaps, the harbor
master' s crew could "sweep?" the water close to the pier to try to get
the abandoned/lost tangles of fishing line out? What's possible here?

One other note, a good one: There is a pond, easy to view from the
parking lot of Target's, in Tukwila that has a number of ducks such as
Canvasback and Ruddy (my favorite!) and various mergansers. Go for it!

Cheers and pretty good day,
Maureen Ellis me2 at u.washington.edu Univ of WA and Des Moines, WA