Hello, tweeters.

Netta and I visited friends in Portland yesterday and managed to get in some
birding on the way back to Seattle today. We drove the dike road west of
Woodland and saw nothing too special there except huge flocks of blackbirds,
far too many to scrutinize for Tricolored, although we looked over the
closer ones on the ground. Quite a few cowbirds, some of them males
displaying to females. At Lions Day Park, we pished in 10-15 Golden-crowned
and White-crowned Sparrows, and among them were two White-throated. I would
say from the number of White-throats even I've seen this winter, there have
to be many hundreds, almost without doubt thousands, of them in Washington.
We also saw a flock of about 100 Sandhill Cranes along this road. We
stopped and looked briefly at 10 Tundra Swans on a pond just east of I-5
north of Woodland.

We then went over to Julia Butler Hansen NWR, and found Steve Pink, who had
waited two hours before finally seeing the Black Phoebe foraging from a
little shed near the headquarters building. We waited about two *minutes*
before it flew in and perched on the same building; beginner's luck. The
only other species of interest we saw there was White-tailed Kite, a pair
(probably mated) perched on a Himalayan blackberry clump out in a field to
the east of Steamboat Slough Road a mile or so past the headquarters. Steve
had asked about the species, and I said "I don't know where they're being
seen." Not 10 minutes later, there they were, and I wished I could ESP him.

Probably the neatest thing we saw was at the first pond along that same
road, where the Sullivans reported shorebirds some time back. There was a
little pond in the foreground with about 50 Dunlins and perhaps 8 Western
Sandpipers spread out all along it. All of a sudden they all flushed in a
cloud (parenthetically, I would very much like to get movies of this
flushing, because the birds coalesce faster than I would have thought
possible), apparently because a harrier was heading toward them. The
harrier landed and began eating a vole it had caught. The sandpipers landed
in a flock near the pond, and then I noticed a single Black-bellied Plover
between the sandpipers and the harrier. The plover ran along a course at
right angles to the hawk, and to my amazement, the whole flock of sandpipers
ran lickety-split over the field and joined the plover. They then all flew
away, darn it.

It couldn't have been more obvious that they were attracted to the larger
bird, and I was excited by this, as the Dunlin has been called "plover's
page" because researchers in the Arctic have seen them hanging around with
golden-plovers and joining them repeatedly. A plover flies up and lands, a
Dunlin flies up and lands very near it. The idea is that the plover is a
sentinel bird, feeding visually and much more aware of its surroundings than
the head-buried-in-the-water Dunlin. By foraging near the plover, the
Dunlin affords itself considerable protection. Large plovers not only
detect approaching predators, but they actually mob them on the breeding
grounds. I wrote a paper about Buff-breasted Sandpipers nesting near
Black-bellied Plovers for this same protection, so I'm a firm believer. To
see those sandpipers rush over a distance of perhaps 20 meters to join that
plover really made my day. Netta had never heard of this interaction, and
she thought there was no doubt about what had happened.

Interesting mammal-watching down there, too. At and near JBHNWR we saw both
Black-tailed and White-tailed Deer, and it's neat being able to see them
within a short time and compare them. Nutrias are all over the place in
that part of the state, and it's fun to watch these big clunky rodents;
also, they're amazingly tame. We walked up to within 10' of one feeding on
the grass at the refuge headquarters. Some of you may not know that
"nutria" is the Spanish word for otter, although nutrias of course are
rodents, a South American group related to capybaras and agoutis and the
like.

I know pinnipeds travel well up the Columbia River during smelt-spawning
season, but it's always a bit surprising to see them in fresh water. We saw
2 California Sea Lions up the Lewis River a little ways from its mouth, and
a Harbor Seal in the Columbia near Cathlamet.

You know, there really is nothing else like being out in nature and reveling
in it, long may it survive.

Dennis
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115