hello tweets.

the montlake fill is looking wonderful today; sunny, warm but
with a light breeze to keep things cool. the birds are also
looking good. as you might recall, i mentioned that i saw two
American Pipits last night. today, while watching shorebirds,
i counted nine American Pipits, feeding in a loose flock on the
shore nearby. they all are a pale yellow color, in contrast to
the earlier group of pipits that i saw at the fill, that showed
a wide variation in their colors; some as pale yellow as the
surrounding stubble, while others were almost as bright orange
as a female American Robin.

i relocated the Solitary Sandpiper on the same pond that
i first saw him at last week. feeding at the opposite end of this
pond was a breeding-plumaged Lesser Yellowlegs and surrounding
the yellowlegs was a group of six Least Sandpipers, also busily
feeding. the pair of Cinnamon Teal were still there, the drake's
feathers blazing gloriously in the midday sun. a pair of Northern
Shovelers were feeding next to the teal, allowing me to study the
differences between the two hens. the teal hen looked to be
almost the same size as the shoveler hen, but her bill was
noticeably smaller. the teal hen also has darker markings on her
head in particular, thus giving her a more definite buffy line
above her eye and a darker little "hat" on the top her her head.
but the most obvious difference between these two hens was the
color of the bill, as i am sure you all know. the shoveler hen's
bill was a brilliant orange while the teal hen's bill was dark with
a pale orange edging all around the upper mandible.

other notable birds were the three Bald Eagles soaring high above,
two adults and one third-year immature bird. i have seen these three
birds together above the fill before, and wonder why three birds
would be so tolerant of each other during the breeding season?
i checked on the chickadee nest again, but the Northern Flicker has
reclaimed it for good, it seems. that flicker is a very devoted
excavator, since he is always hanging off the front of the nest hole
or inside the cavity, rooting around and tossing wood pulp out
of the door. i have not yet found where the chickadees have gone
to. i also saw a Belted Kingfisher fly over, rattling exuberantly
all the way. when i heard the kingfisher's familiar call, i realized
that this is the first one that i have seen or heard at the fill
this year. even though this bird flew low over my head, i had the
bad luck to be standing under a tree, and so was not able to get
a long enough look at the bird to determine its gender.

i was at the fill for only a short time; 140-230pm.

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~nyneve/
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