Tweets - as all of you probably know, I have been walking Marymoor Park in
Redmond once a week year round since April, 1994. I thought I'd give you a bit
of a summary of the sightings for 1999.

We had the highest total species count every in 1999, with 126 species (I
personally had 123). This compares with 114, 115, 116, 114, and 101 species
for 1998-1994 respectively.

Some of this was clearly a case of my knowing when to look for what species
where, and thereby detecting more of the transient species. A prime example of
this was locating American Pipit on the grass soccer fields exactly two years
(to the week) after the only other time I'd seen them. There appears to be a
very narrow window in late September when they may visit there.

On the other hand, the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher that I found on October 21st, a
fourth state record, was not a species likely to have been regularly present
but undetected!

The "new" species for 1999, along with some other unusual species were:

Red-necked Grebe 2nd sighting
Trumpeter Swan 1st positive ID
Least Sandpiper 2nd sighting
Long-eared Owl 1st sighting (Not by me :( )
Olive-sided Flycatcher 1st sighting
Say's Phoebe 1st sighting
Western Kingbird 3rd, 4th sightings
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 1st sighting
Nashville Warbler 2nd sighting
MacGillivray's Warbler 3rd sighting
Lazuli Bunting 3rd sighting

Misses for the year were Ruddy Duck, Pacific-slope Flycatcher, and Northern
Rough-winged Swallow.

In terms of trends and patterns, many duck numbers were way down, especially in
November and December. This was particularly notcable with Northern Shoveler,
Canvasback, Ring-necked Duck, Greater Scaup, Lesser Scaup, and Ruddy Duck.
Swallow *numbers* were down in general. A few, seemingly random species were
notably up in numbers or in number of sightings: Wood Duck, Osprey, Killdeer,
Winter Wren, and Pine Siskin.

It was a good spring migration for more-typically Eastern Washington species,
as is visible in the list of new species. Between March 11 and June 3, we saw
Western Meadowlark, Say's Phoebe, Long-eared Owl, Mountain Bluebird, Western
Kingbird, MacGillivray's Warbler, Mourning Dove, and Lazuli Bunting.

And it was an excellent year for company. More people joined me than ever
before, (including an even dozen on one day!) which was a lot of fun.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland WA
== hummer at isomedia.com