We had another great morning at Spencer Island on Sunday. Gone were most
of the clouds of swallows that we had seen on our previous visit, gone were
all the flycatchers and most of the Neotropical migrant passerines. But
there were still many birds, and the walk from the parking lot to the
bridge was especially rich for birds, a higher density there than we saw on
Spencer Island. I wondered if the area around the sewage ponds produces
more insect life than the less "fertile" habitats elsewhere.

Song Sparrows and Spotted Towhees were much more common than on the
previous visit, and I wonder if a large proportion of those present in the
winter are migrants from elsewhere. We had been seeing "Audubon's"
Yellow-rumped Warblers in great numbers on just about every trip in the
last month, so it was fascinating to see that most of the Yellow-rumps
today were Myrtles. I was also a bit surprised at the lack of Ruby-crowned
Kinglets; perhaps most of them migrate through the mountains.
Spencer Island and Everett Sewage Ponds (SP)24 Sep 2000; 08:40-11:20;
weather beautiful; Dennis Paulson and Netta Smith
Pied-billed Grebe - 2 Great Blue Heron - 3 Canada Goose - 20 (SP)
Green-winged Teal - 3 Mallard - 30 Northern Pintail - 30 Blue-winged Teal -
3 Northern Shoveler - 500 (most SP) Gadwall - 20 Ruddy Duck - 500 (SP)
Northern Harrier - 2 (one soared up and flew off to south) Cooper's Hawk -
1 Red-tailed Hawk - 2 Peregrine Falcon - 3 (adult male and female
interacting persistently - chasing? bonding? - and imm male seen briefly)
Virginia Rail - heard American Coot - 300 (most SP) Killdeer - 8 Pectoral
Sandpiper - 3 (flew down to mudflats with 3 Killdeer, just as quickly flew
away, perhaps nervous because two Peregrines visible) Common Snipe - 1
Bonaparte's Gull - 25 (SP) Mew Gull - 8 (most SP) Ring-billed Gull - 4 (SP)
California Gull - 1 (overhead) Glaucous-winged Gull - 5 (SP) Vaux's Swift -
1 Belted Kingfisher - 2 Downy Woodpecker - 4 Northern Flicker - 2 Purple
Martin - 1 (adult male, interesting because birds staying late tend to be
young birds) Barn Swallow - 25 Steller's Jay - 5 "Northwestern" Crow - 4
Black-capped Chickadee - 10 Brown Creeper - 1 (quite a surprise--I had no
idea of the identity of the little bird undulating in flight along the
westside levee, then it stopped and I could see it creeping up a Sitka
spruce) Bewick's Wren - 1 Marsh Wren - 4 American Robin - 100 Cedar Waxwing
- 150 European Starling - 250 (most flying over) Yellow-rumped Warbler - 60
(vast majority Myrtles) Common Yellowthroat - 6 Spotted Towhee - 7 Savannah
Sparrow - 2 Fox Sparrow - 1 Song Sparrow - 45 Lincoln's Sparrow - 8
Golden-crowned Sparrow - 2 White-crowned Sparrow - 15 Red-winged Blackbird
- 30 Purple Finch - 1 House Finch - 10 American Goldfinch - 20
Oh yes, you're probably wondering about the eastern vagrant. I saw a male
Black Meadowhawk (Sympetrum danae) along the levee, a dragonfly never
before reported from Snohomish County. It is basically a species of the
mountains and eastern Washington, and I suspect the strong east winds may
have blown it to Spencer Island.

Good birding!

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html