The birds were tiny.......Gawd I wish I could figure them out! Any GREBE
EXPERTS out there? Although they didn't look like the drawings of the
winter colored eared or horned grebes, their behavior and body language
suggested *grebe*.
I wrote earlier this week:
"......Black heads and bills, Broad White-ish necklaces, speckeled with
black. Back,
speckled black and white. Dark under bodies. These little birds were
diving
from the surface of the water. Very strong swimmers in the current. They
were staying pretty much in the same spot inspite of the strong current"

BrewsPad wrote......
Palegic Cormorants successfully fishing under the Meeker Street Bridge.
They
are very strong swimmers and were staying in relatively the same spot in a
very strong current. When surfaced, they "sit" very low in the water.
Though
I didn't have binoculars to get a detail look at them, the "Birds of
Seattle
and Puget Sound" (Chris C. Fisher) picture shows them to have a whitish
necklace and white on their backs. The major difference between these
and the
birds Lydia describes is the size. The Pelagic Cormorants are a little
larger
than a Mallard.

GREBE EXPERTS Please Speak Up!

Oh, and the other day I saw what looked like a CORMORANT land on a
teetery tall branch of a tree above the Green River. The darned bird had
trouble geting it's balance on such an unstable perch. Do cormorants land
on tall branches? It didn't appear slender and long necked enough to be
a Great Blue Heron.

And GEESE......The other day I was looking for the elusive ROSS/SNOW
goose and spied several flocks of Canadas of various size. I have heard
flocks of Cacklers flying over head several times this past fall and
winter.
One of the flocks by the Boeing Space Center had individuals with fairly
wide white "necklaces", and when they decided I was stalking too close
they flew off sounding like a cross between regular and cacklers. These
geese seemed a bit smaller than the honkers. Do the smaller geese sound
less honkey than than the big ones, but not as "caklery" as Cacklers?

Oh, and in the pond sunken so stealthily in the field, I spied my first
EURASIAN WIGEON in a small flock of American Wigeons.

Lydia In Kent

Lydia Gaebe In Kent, WA
lydia at wizards.net
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