Tweets - Brian Bell and I had a glorious morning for walking around Marymoor
today. The birds are SINGING! We had bonafide songs from Red-winged
Blackbird, Song Sparrow, Black-capped Chickadee, Dark-eyed Junco, Marsh Wren,
Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Bewick's Wren, Spotted Towhee, and White-crowned Sparrow.
[Yesterday, I heard and saw a Brown Creeper song at Lake Samm. State Park, and
this morning the American Robins outside my window were doing their monotonous
cherio-cheriup], We also had lots of head bobbing from Bufflehead, and an
amazing mirror dance of head jabs between

The birds were all very active and numerous and we very quickly got up around
35 species, making me sure we'd hit 50 by the end of the trip. However, while
the birds remained fairly plentiful, the species list didn't grow so much - we
ended up with 47. Highlights:

Cooper's Hawk I on far side of slough at lake again
Merlin Dark female seen twice, or 2
Red-breasted Sapsucker Gorgeous pair at Rowing Club
Hairy Woodpecker Nice pair at start of boardwalk
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1 M Aud., 1 F Myrt?
Purple Finch Beautiful look at a lone male

We initially saw the MERLIN from the east side of the nature trail - it flew
over us carrying a bird in its talons and landed in a sna on the east edge of
the park, where it proceeded to feed. About an hour later, as we headed out of
the park, we spotted a Merlin in a cottonwood just east of the slough bridge.
This one we were able to view at close range through our scopes. It appeared
to be a female suckleyi race, which is what I thought the one which flew
overhead had been (hence my belief that we saw 1 bird twice). We also saw a
male Merlin last week.

The RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER were at the Rowing Club. The first one we saw was
about the brightest red I've ever seen on a RBSA. It flew of to another tree
where we noted a second bird, then both moved on to the north.

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