Tweetfolk:

On Friday I thought my daughter had a playgroup in Laurelhurst, but it
turned out that I had the date wrong, so it seemed opportune to visit the
Montlake fill nearby. The Canada geese there occasionally would quit
honking long enough to be able to hear that the red-winged blackbirds were
making almost as much racket.
There were three greater white-fronted geese near Shoveler Pond (Question:
are there lesser WF geese?). Down near the tree where the eagle hangs out,
there was a goose which I am sure was a cross between a Canada and a
Chinese goose. It had the dark stripe on the back of the neck like a
chinese, but had part of the dark facial mask of a canada, if I am
remembering it right. It seemed to be paired to another canada.
there were three other odd-looking geese, one mostly white, one looking
like a canada but with a mostly white head and neck, and a third one
somewhere in between that I won't try to describe. Of course I studied them
closely and tried to make them into snow geese or some other interesting
bird, but when I got back home to my field guide (who takes a field guide
to an infants' playgroup?), the details all became confused in my mind,
except that it seemed pretty clear they they all three must be hybrids of
some kind and not indigenous species. i may go back with a camera to help
out my aging memory.
Others at the fill:

coot bufflehead
Am widgeon EurAsian widgeon
gadwall mallard
green-winged teal northern shoveler
ruddy duck ring-necked duck (?)
mute swan double-crested cormorant
bald eagle red-tailed hawk
downy woodpecker crow
robin red-wing blackbird
starling house sparrow
sparrow sp gull sp

When i got home it seemed like too nice a day not to take the dog out, so
late in the afternoon we went to Seward Park. Most of the winter ducks
seemed to have been driven off by the recent storms, so it seemed unlikely
that we would see much interesting. But out on the NW tip of Bailey
Peninsula, near the Rev. Murphy Fishing Pier, there were two eared grebes
fishing along the shore. A third grebe was almost surely also an eared,
but I didn't get a good enough look to be sure. These small grebes had the
thin upwardly angled bills and poofed-up hairdos that looked completely
different than other grebes i've seen (except the eared grebe I saw last
year at Seward Park).

all in all it was an interesting day to be off work in Seattle.

Good grebing!

Paul Talbert
Seattle
tuisto at oz.net