While boating up the Duwamish River in Seattle today with Jean Power, we discovered that one of the two successful Y2K Seattle purple martin boxes has been lost; only three weeks ago I had seen it, so I am assuming that perhaps the box was dislodged from the rotting piling during the recent earthquake. The 2 billion dollar WA earthquake damage estimate can be revised to about $2,000,000,015. Another piling with a box was lost over the winter, so none of the boxes known to have been used by Seattle martins last year remain. Good thing the quake didn't happen during nesting season!

Jean and I installed seven new martin boxes at terminal 105 today, and hopefully the returning martins won't mind the new digs. We also put up two new boxes just downstream in Elliott Bay, not far SE from Salty's. I don't expect to find martins till mid May, but high tide and calm sunny weather made today an excellent day for installation.

Kevin Li
Ballard, WA
kdli at msn.com
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