Hi Tweets -

We finally had a beautiful morning with SUN. Not too cold except for my toes,
and I think that was because we had to wade so much. The water level is now
just under 6 feet at the gauge near the weir - up over a foot since last
Wednesday, up 6" since Saturday, and the second highest I've recorded there
behind an estimated 7' 3" on January 2, 1997. Water covers the first
footbridge (opposite the Rowing Club dock), and there's at least a hundred
yards of trail north of the west end of the boardwalk that is underwater. Of
course we had to go around to the other end of the boardwalk. The boardwalk
itself is mostly floating, though in places where it is anchored well, the
water level is about 10" above the boards. There are large ponds scattered
across the dog area, which attracted Mallard, Am. Crow, Mew and Ring-billed
Gull.

At the rowing club, the path is flooded starting at the west end of the
boathouse, and it was too deep for us to get to the dock, despite wearing 15"
boots.

We had some great looks at birds in the sun. Nothing too startling, but some
nice stuff:

Common Goldeneye Drake off Dog Central in the sun - WOW
Orange-crowned Warbler One northeast of boardwalk
Yellow-rumped Warbler Several sightings, Myrtle's & Audubon's
Purple Finch Female just south of the dog area

We ran into Jim McCoy, and he later sent me email reporting a MERLIN over the
dog meadow. He also had BUSHTIT and AMERICAN GOLDFINCH which we missed.

A bit belated, but Saturday on the ELWAS CBC, I had a BARN OWL at the windmill
around 7:15 a.m., and we had a HERMIT THRUSH about as close to the boardwalk as
we could get along the slough.

There are relatively fresh owl pellets near the picnic shelter just northeast
of the dog area parking lot, as well as under a clump of cedars north of the
access road between the new all-weather soccer field and the new grass soccer
field. That's good, because Brian Bell pointed out to me that the
reconstruction of the softball fields in the northwest corner of Marymoor
entailed the removal of a nice grove of cedars that was a day roost for Barn
Owl...

All told, including Jim McCoy's three, we had 49 species today.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland WA
== Hummer at isomedia.com
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm