Hi tweets,

My employer gave me a comp day today, so I decided to take a quick loop around the north sound. There wasn't a big variety of species (73+/-), but I got some really great looks.

First stop: the OSPREY nest at Everett Marina. Not that they're rare, but seeing any raptor breeding in a busy area is a really neat spectacle.

Next Spencer Island, where a GREEN HERON made itself prominent along the gravel road next to the sewage ponds. It kept circling and landing on open branches of the dead trees along the road, and let me get a great look. In and over the ponds themselves, there were CLIFF, BARN and TREE SWALLOWS, RUDDY DUCKS, some LESSER SCAUP and the REDHEADS that were reported last week. Spencer Island itself was loud with bird song: fitz-bewing WILLOW FLYCATCHERS, queeping SWAINSON'S THRUSH, seeping CEDAR WAXWINGS, AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES, and a couple of YELLOW WARBLERS and WILSON'S WARBLERS and a CASSIN'S VIREO. And many BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS. Along the trail fairly deep in an alder grove, I picked a SPOTTED SANDPIPER out of a flock of spotty young robins that were also sitting on the gravel path. (Identity crisis?!)

Then Whidbey Island. The ferry crossing from Mukilteo to Clinton proved nearly birdless, so I headed for S. Whidbey State Park, which I found full of singing WINTER WRENS, ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLERS, GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS, and a few RED CROSSBILLS. At the beach, I was surprised to notice a doe dipping her hooves in the surf. She was standing next to a beachside house, ankle-deep in the water, looking around, and nonchalantly letting the tide soak her feet. I had to mischievously wonder if she has a fungal hoof disease, or if she just stepped in someone's campfire...

At the Keystone ferry terminal, I had a close encounter with a BALD EAGLE - a very low flyover as he was apparently checking out the primarily PIGEON GUILLEMOT breeding colony on the old ferry dock. Two GW gulls chased him off, as all the adult guillemots dropped off into the water, and the young ones started peeping very loudly. That kind of thing is hard to witness, since its [native, non-parasitic] bird v. [native, non-parasitic] bird. Bird v. fish is a lot more fun: Near the working ferry dock, I noticed a male BELTED KINGFISHER sitting on a post at very close range. The next moment, he dove, caught a little fish, scarfed it down, shook himself off, went back for seconds, came up with another one twice as big, gnashed on that one for a bit, and down it went. All in a total of half a minute!

The Keystone-Port Townsend ferry was neat... In addition to large numbers of RHINOCEROUS AUKLETS and a few other avians (BRANDT'S CORMORANT, CASSIN'S AUKLET, guillemots), I also observed two HARBOR SEALS and a CALIFORNIA SEA LION, who kept rolling over and waving a long brown flipper at the boat as it went past.

Not much showed up after that... Aside from the barely-visible flocks of "rhinos" flying over the straight, the birds of interest at Fort Worden were mostly SAVANNAH and WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS, a few KILLDEER, and some "NORTHWESTERN" CROWS. I also spotted a COMMON LOON near shore while leaving Port Townsend, and that concluded a pretty fun day.

Regards,
Christine Vadai
Mill Creek, WA
christinevadai at sprynet.com