Hi folks,

I don't know whether this is Earthquake-related, or just part of normal
winter movements.

For the past 2-3 weeks, most of the juncos in my yard & neighborhood had
been here for a while. The majority of the birds at my feeders had been
banded through the winter, and when I've recently operated my mist-nets for
banding, I have been getting mostly re-captures of previously-banded birds.

Friday morning, I noticed that hardly any of the juncos were banded. I set
up the nets, and of the 15 juncos I've captured yesterday and this morning,
only one had been previously-banded: And *that one* was the recapture of
the bird Don Norman had banded at Fort Lewis last summer! The Ft Lewis site
and my yard are about equally-distant from 'Ground Zero' of the temblor.

It may be hard to tell, unless the birds are marked, but I'm wondering if
anyone else noticed that there has been a shift in the junco flocks since
the earthquake? Did these flocks decide to 'get the heck out of Dodge'?
Gene Kridler, have you seen anything unusual up on the Strait?

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net