hello tweets,

as marissa mention to you all on tuesday, i have been dragging my poor,
tortured students through the montlake fill this past tuesday and
wednesday afternoons to look at the resident wildlife. this field trip is
the last lab of the academic quarter for my "diversity of animals"
elective class. since this class also explored aspects of animals other
than birds, my report will include a few comments about non-avians that
also live at the montlake fill.

for those of you who have time to read long reports, feel free to skip to
the end for my trip list. for those of you who find the lack of capital
letters in an informal written message to be a capital offense punishable
by electronic evisceration, please delete now.

there were two birds that we saw that i think would interest the tweets
most. the first bird was a single western kingbird that was hawking
flying insects from several different locations. i first discovered
this bird when it was sitting in the dead tree in the central pond. later,
this bird moved to the blackberry brambles that are about one foot high
standing northeast of the central pond and southwest of "shoveler's pond
(?)." on wednesday, the kingbird was located in the short trees and
blackberry brambles that are immediately north of the main trail that
runs directly between the urban hort center and the "dime lot" that
borders the montlake fill. this bird is quite shy, but my students were
still able to get a good look at it.

the second remarkable bird sighting was the pileated woodpecker. i
first spotted this bird on tuesday as it flew north-northeast over the
montlake fill, and i thought that this would be the last that i would ever
see of any pileated woodpecker at the fill because this species is very
unusual at the fill, based upon my years of experience there. however, i
was quite wrong. wednesday, my first class of the afternoon also spotted
this bird as we walked up to the aspens (cottonwoods?) that border the
slough next to the first wooden bridge. the bird flew from a tree and over
our heads, giving everyone great looks as it disappeared over the trees
next to the baseball diamond (soccer field?), apparently startled by all
of us.

the bald eagles were very active all afternoon, and my students were
really impressed by them. the two adults put on quite a lovely show on
wednesday as they engaged each other in a graceful aerial dance that
went on for at least ten minutes. they flew next to each other, wingtips
touching at times, over the entire campus, fill, lake, freeway and all
the way over to the distant hill where the burke museum stands. the
immatures spent most of their time dive-bombing ducks, coots, grebes,
canada geese sitting on the lake surface, finally settling for picking
the many perch carcasses off the lake surface. the successful young
eagle would eat the fish as she soared over the lake, and then her
partner would crash in on the party an an aerial battle would ensue.
more than once, my students and i watched at the fish carcass would
fall down onto some expensive driveway, sidewalk or roof at the north
end of the bay.

the great blue herons, another large and impressive bird, were also
favorites of my students. one great blue heron stood on a log in the
lake near shore, showing off his fishing skills. he stood as still as
a snag, but leaned out further and further over the water until *sploot*
he fell in! the water was deeeper than the bird's head, so he ended up
using the breast stroke to swim back to his perch. my students were
quite amused by this.

the large fish die-off also provided a huge food bonanza for the crows,
which were going crazy for all the readily available food. i even saw
crows picking fish carcasses off the surface of the lake! they would fly
into a headwind until they would be effectively hovering. at this point,
they would reach down and neatly pick a dead fish from the lake surface
and, with obvious effort, would fly away to consume their prize in
peace. the entire montlake fill is littered with many many dozens of dead
fish, all of them 4-5 inches long -- almost too big for a crow to haul
onto land (the eagles' fishes had a larger size range).

other fun birds seen included the 11 (at least!) blue-winged teal and
the pair of cinnamon teal on tuesday. all of these birds mysteriously
disappeared by wednesday, leaving me to finally discover one pair of
blue-winged teal on a small overgrown pond around 400pm, wednesday.
the cedar waxwings were loud but elusive on both days, but the tuesday
group of students managed to get some wonderful looks at a gorgeous
waxwing as it sat cooperatively in a cedar tree near the north bridge
next to the slough.

i also saw one pair of gorgeous breeding-plumaged green herons as they
landed on a couple logs floating in the water near the shore of the
lake. i, one one very fast student who shadowed me all afternoon, managed
to get some really astonishing looks at these beautiful birds from only
12-15 feet away! the ducklings and goslings were amazingly popular with
my students (i know i should have expected this, but i was surprised at
their intense level interest). on tuesday, we found a fairly easy-to-see
coot nest, which also was very popular with the students, so i hoped to
show this nest to the wednesday groups. instead, we were rewarded with
two lovely brilliant red-orange cootlings following their parents closely
through the irises and lillies. my students were absolutely delighted.

other animals seen included many painted turtles, ranging in size from
perhaps 6-14 inches (lengthwise). again, i found myself surprised at the
intense interest shown by my students in these (rather sedentary) animals.

i was disappointed that we did not see any california quail, fox sparrows,
vireos, and almost no warblers. we also didn't see any muskrats -- a sure
sighting, i had thought! the cool and windy weather prevented us from
seeing any garter snakes (another disappointment).

nevertheless, we did have a good couple of days. despite the large groups
of students that accompanied me, we managed to see 45 species of birds
between the hours of 1230-430pm, tuesday (T) and wednesday (W)
[interesting birds noted with an asterix, domestics and hybrids are noted
in this list but not included in total species count];

pied-billed grebe (TW)
double-crested cormorant, 5, fly-over (T)
great blue heron, many (TW)
green heron, 3 (T)
canada goose and goslings, numerous (TW)
domestic white goose, 1 (TW)
mallard and ducklings, several dozen (TW)
gadwall, 4-5 males, 2 females (TW)
blue-winged teal, 9 males, 3 females (T), 1 male, 1 female (W)
cinnamon teal, 1 male, 1 female (T)
northern shoveler, 4 males, 2 females (T)
red-tailed hawk, 1 immature, (W)
bald eagle, 2 adult, 2 immature (TW)
osprey, 1 (W)
ring-necked pheasant, 1 male (W)
american coot (TW) one pair on nest (T) then with chicks (W)
killdeer, (TW)
glaucous-winged gull (TW)
"olympic" gull (TW)
ring-billed gull, 2 (W)
caspian tern, 2 (T) and 5 (W)
rock dove, (TW)
vaux's swift, 8+ (TW)
anna's hummingbird, heard only (W)
red-shafted flicker, (TW)
*pileated woodpecker, 1 (TW)
*western kingbird, 1 (TW)
violet-green swallow, many (TW)
tree swallow (T)
barn swallow, many (TW)
cliff swallow, many (TW)
common crow, many (TW)
black-capped chickadee (TW)
bushtit, (TW)
bewick's wren, (TW)
marsh wren, (TW)
american robin, (TW)
cedar waxwing, (TW)
yellow-rumped (audubon's) warbler, (TW)
common yellowthroat, (TW)
red-winged blackbird, (TW)
house finch, (TW)
american goldfinch, heard only (T) seen (W)
savannah sparrow, many (TW)
white-crowned sparrow, (TW)
song sparrow, (TW)
english sparrow, (TW)

at least 10 species of non-avians;

painted turtles, 1 (T), many dozens (W)
dead perch everywhere!! massive die-off? why? (TW)
dipteran spp., large obnoxious clouds at eye-level, (TW)
spittle bugs, many (TW)
lady bird beetles, many on thistles (TW)
beetle spp. (resembles glossy highly-polished brass), dozens (W)
aphids, both black and green, millions on thistles, (TW)
black ants, several castes ranching aphids, (TW)
parasitic hymenopteran spp., (W)
bumblebee spp, (TW)

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
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