Hi Tweets - Under cloudy skies, four of us met this morning at 7:00 a.m. on the
most windless day I've ever seen at Marymoor. The lake was an absolute mirror,
except where boats had created ripples. The light was difficult, and I know we
missed several birds because of it. Still, it was an interesting day with a
couple of surprises:

Common Snipe 2 at weir
Virginia Rail 2 heard well
Brown Creeper With BCCH just south of dog area gate
Golden-crowned Kinglet With creeper
Warbling Vireo With creeper
Western Wood-Pewee With creeper
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1 1st year male

The COMMON SNIPE were only the second September sightings I've had at Marymoor.
It was kind of cool - we were just south of the weir when I saw two snipe
flying towards the lake. As they passed us, they made a U-turn and headed down
towards the weir. We rushed down to the first dog swim area to see if we could
see them. All four of us scanned and rescanned the far shore. Finally, I saw
one of the snipe in the air, doing a big circle and landing again, right next
to the other snipe, *on the far shore*. Despite all of us looking, we had been
unable to see the snipe before we knew where they were. Once we knew, it was a
great look.

The next big excitement was a large flock of birds just south of the gate at
the south end of the dog area. The trees were full of birds, mostly
chickadees, but we were able to pick out the creeper, kinglet, pewee, vireo,
and pewee. The lighting was terrible looking up into the trees, and it took
forever for almost everyone to see almost all of the "good" birds.

The only warblers we saw well enough to ID were yellowthroats and the
Yellow-rumped. We saw several other warblers, which might have included
Orange-crowned and Black-throated Gray, but they were (shall we say)
uncooperative.

We had a seven sparrow day, with SONG, FOX, WHITE-CROWNED, GOLDEN-CROWNED,
LINCOLN'S (at least 5), and Savannah (at least 25), as well as Spotted Towhee.

The other notable thing was the number of CEDAR WAXWING - there were several
flocks of 20-40 birds; hard to get a good count of the total, but perhaps
75-100. They were EVERYWHERE.

The HOODED MERGANSER males at the RC pond are beginning to get their alternate
plumage.

All told. 42 species with some certainty, plus several "it-coulda-been-a"s.

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