Subject: Spencer Island
Date: Sep 1 08:33:14 1998
From: "Mel Richardson & Dawn Garcia" - drmel at sprintmail.com


Tweeters,

A friend and I were at Spencer island yesterday morning. We noticed many
(~15) western tanager females, black-headed grosbeaks (~15) males and
females, and evening grosbeaks (~10). We were curious as to the lack of
male tanagers, and assume they must migrate ahead of the females. This
number of these bird species seems high to me, does this indicate a kind of
mini "fallout" or "staging" during migration, or are those numbers typical
for the area?
Anyone know about this? We saw lots of "typical" sightings (i.e. marsh
wren, yellowthroat, song sparrow, swainson's thrush, robin, willow
flycatcher, waxwings), and some other fun sightings were:
Eastern kingbird (5)
Purple Martin (1, not on checklist)
Morning dove (not on checklist!)
Lincoln's sparrow (~5)
Red-tailed hawk (successful at hunt)
N. Harrier (male)
Osprey (2, one hunting)
Yellow warbler
Audubon's warbler
Orange-crowned warbler

With all of the activity in the trees we didn't get much time to search the
water, but came out with a 48spp. morning!
Dawn Garcia
Drmel at sprintmail.com