hello tweeters.

after spending the morning acting as a cat wrangler, trying
to cram two whining and complaining cats into carriers so
they could visit the vet, i finally managed to make it to
the montlake fill, where i was only a little bit late for a
meeting with another tweeter. together, we saw a few birds
that i hadn't seen yesterday (of course, i saw a few yesterday
that i couldn't find today). i counted either ten or twelve
swallows, at least two of which are violet-green swallows.
we also saw a lovely male canvasback, and a small group of three
bachelor ringnecked pheasants several times as we
walked through the fill. the three greater white-fronted
geese were still there, but this time they had located themselves
strategically near to the "warlock goose" and his wife
(the pair of geese that tried to dine on me yesterday).
the ruby-crowned kinglets and the robins were singing
almost constantly, and the marsh wrens and downy woodpeckers
were also quite vocal. the duck population was quite
skittish this morning, making me wonder if they are getting
ready to move on?

i looked for turtles at the dime-lot pond, since i saw five
large turtles there yesterday, perched on a floating log,
but i couldn't find them today. there is a growing population
of flies and other small flying food items (for swallows and
such) and there were dozens of queen bumblebees flying around,
looking for small holes to build their nests in. i did notice,
with some disappointment, that the killdeer nest had only three
eggs in it, instead of the four that i counted yesterday.

as you all probably know, the weather today was simply
.... stunning. i think this is only the second day of unadulterated
sunshine in 1999 (okay, slight exaggeration, we really have
had four such days, right???). anyway, i decided that losing
my own personal rainclouds for the day came at a steep price.
as i mentioned earlier, i was a few minutes late to our meeting
spot. the person that i was meeting kindly informed me that
i missed seeing the yellow-shafted flicker by a mere minute
or two. if given a choice, i would much prefer to have seen
this flicker, even if karma dictates that i must have soggy
underwear as well!

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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