I am told that the purple martins on Vashon are doing their dawn song well
before light, at around 4am. Rich Siegrist currently reports a couple of
dozen pairs at his martin sites around the island.
Seattle has a few martins at the Ballard/Shilshole site, but I'm not up
early enough to hear them.

Kevin Li
King County Environmental Lab
322 West Ewing St.
Seattle, WA 98119

(206) 684-2344




> ----------
> From: Rahne Kirkham[SMTP:rahne at mindspring.com]
> Reply To: Rahne Kirkham
> Sent: Thursday, June 03, 1999 4:12 PM
> To: John Fleckenstein
> Cc: tweeters
> Subject: Re: swallow songs
>
> We do get a kind of dawn chorus here in Federal Way but there isn't a wide
> variety of species and it's not so loud. I am a very early riser and I do
> hear it. When I was growing up in Puyallup, the chorus (mostly of robins)
> was deafening.
>
> Rahne Kirkham
> Federal Way
> rahne at mindspring.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Fleckenstein <JFMM490 at wadnr.gov>
> To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 1999 12:37 PM
> Subject: swallow songs
>
>
> Tweetsters
> One reason I have taken special notice of the swallows in the morning is
> the
> general lack of a dawn chorus, at least in my neighborhood. In the
> midwest,
> in late May and June, early dawn to sunup is a time of bedlam in
> birdsville.
> In my old neighborhood, cardinals and robins led the way with grosbeaks,
> orioles, and warblers adding to the mix. So many birds are calling at a
> time that it's hard to identify them. In areas where diversity is high,
> Breeding Bird Survey stops can be extremely confusing. It was one of the
> benefits of having a baby in the spring and an excellent reason to walk
> the
> dog at sunup.
>
> Do people hear a dawn chorus elsewhere on the wet side? Does it happen in
> areas of diverse habitat on the east side?
>
> John Fleckenstein
> Olympia
>
>
>