Tweets,

Today was the perfect day for winter bird counting. I was assigned Kevin
Aanerud's traditional territory, the Montlake Fill, UW campus, Laurelhurst,
and Foster Island north of the 520 bridge. I was joined by Melissa Kedgley
and Ken Jacobson and subsequently for some time by Bruce Jones and Mark
Moon.

We lucked out early with three COMMON REDPOLLS in a flock of AMERICAN
GOLDFINCHES along Ravenna Creek on the north edge of the Montlake Fill (in
birches). Other than a PEREGRINE at dawn and the usual, nothing
extraordinary except for a slightly odd duck which we spent half an hour
trying to turn into a female TUFTED DUCK, with limited success, that is, we
decided on consulting Sibley that the lack of any hint of a tuft and the
fact that the evenly gray undertail indicated a first winter bird made the
identification hazardous at best. In any case, it might have been, so if
you're in the vicinity be on the lookout for a female Aythya duck with a
dark bill tip set off somewhat from the blue-gray bill, with a bright white
wing stripe, and a neatly rounded head, not so flat as the usual Greater
Scaup.

By 2:30 PM we had covered the northern 2/3rds of our territory and headed
over to the Museum of History and Industry to check on the Foster Island
trail. Just across the first bridge, onto Marsh Island, we noted a largish
Carduelis flock fly into some birches down the path. En route we ran into
Mark Moon who thought he might have seen some redpolls there. Indeed. The
flock was pure redpoll, at least 90 birds, feeding contentedly on birch
catkins not far above eye-level about 50 feet off the trail. We thought some
of the birds seemed quite pale, but went on to finish our perusal of Foster
Island. On our return we found a small crowd looking at this same flock, now
just 30 feet off the trail, nicely backlit by the sun. They fed for several
minutes at a time, then exploded out of the tree, only to return immediately
to the same spot to feed on, over and over for nearly an hour.

To make a long story short, we picked out what we are confident were at
least one female and one male HOARY REDPOLL in the flock, each studied by
the several of us at 30x in my Kowa scope at 30 feet for several minutes at
a time. The female had immaculate undertail coverts, as far as we could see,
clean white underparts except for a single not too striking line of streaks
on each flank. We noted also that the cheeks were white with hardly a hint
of a postocular stripe. I was able to study this same bird from behind and
slightly above. The wings and back were distinctly frosty, though the rump
could not be seen. The bill seemed short. The male showed just a single fine
dark line on one undertail covert, a very pale pink wash across the breast,
very little soft streaking on forward flanks, a distinctly short bill and
steep face, and white cheeks.

Each time the flock flushed we were rather quickly able to relocate
distinctly pale birds. However, several of these showed considerably more
dark smudging or streaking on the undertail and were otherwise judged not to
match the extreme features of the palest birds studied.

Apparently this same flock has been at this same location for several days
(fide Tom Aversa/Alan Knue) but we were unaware of the earlier reports of
the flock. Bruce Jones independently located the same flock about 1:30 this
afternoon and estimated it to contain 95 birds. There was a single American
Goldfinch with the flock when we saw it. Admittedly, these redpolls exhibit
a wide range of variation in terms of paleness, extent of dark markings on
the undertail coverts, etc., so it is hard to draw a hard and fast line
between the "Commons" and the "Hoaries." However, if the Hoary Redpoll is a
good species, I'm confident there are at least two in this flock.

Gene Hunn.

PS: Our preliminary tally for the Seattle CBC stands at 121, with a Clark's
Grebe, a Greater White-fronted Goose, 7 Crimson-fronted Parakeets, two
Townsend's Solitaires, etc.