Friends,
It has been a day of a great wintering bird wave at a single location
along a trail in Seahurst Park. There were no unfamilar birds, just a
mindboggling number of them in about a 5 meter diameter around me..
.....some at eye-level and some only an arm's length away: Dozens and
dozens of birds (a hundred or more or even several hundred!) in a mixed
flock of BLACK-CAPPED and CHESTNUT-BACKED Chickadees, COMMON Bushtits,
RUBY-CROWNED and GOLDEN-CROWNED Kinglets, 2 WINTER Wrens, 1 BEWICK'S Wren,
1 DOWNY Woodpecker, 1 STELLER'S Jay, 1 SONG Sparrow, 5 DARK-EYED Juncoes
(all the Oregon morph), 2 SPOTTED Towhees, an alarm-calling NORTHERN
Flicker, a distantly-calling PILEATED Woodpecker, and..............a
single lingering HERMIT Thrush!

The waters of the Puget Sound were equally rewarding for sheer numbers:
All along the Seahurst public beach areas were at least 2000+ AMERICAN
Wigeon (with narry a Eurasian amongst 'um), 4 to 6 COMMON Loons with one
still about 80% alternative plumage; scatterings of WHITE-WINGED and
SURF Scoters plus a few HORNED & WESTERN Grebes and MEW Gulls. An
adult BALD Eagle, maybe one of the local nesting residents, was seen a
couple of days ago (as reported by passers-by) in the treetops on the
edge of the lower parking lot, attracting human gawkers.

No rare or unexpected birds observed, but some large numbers in small
places and maybe the Hermit Thrush might be considered a tad late going
south.

Cheers,
Maureen Ellis me2 at u.washington.edu U of WA & Burien-Seahurst Park, WA

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