Subject: Marymoor Park Report (Redmond, King Co., WA) 2/20/2002
Date: Feb 20 20:51:01 2002
From: Michael Hobbs - Hummer at isomedia.com


Tweets - five of us had a glorious morning at Marymoor today. It started with
a bang, as before Ollie had even gotten his car parked I spotted a
WHITE-THROATED SPARROW in amongst around 40 GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS along the
south edge of the Dog Area parking lot. Our viewing of that bird was
interrupted by the overflight of a sub-adult BALD EAGLE. Not a bad way to
start the day.

Highlights:

Common Snipe 1 at Rowing Club
Virginia Rail Heard at least 2 from east side of boardwalk
Western Meadowlark 6 in East Meadow, 1 SINGING
White-throated Sp. 1 or 2 ???
Purple Finch 4 (2M, 2F) seen well in forest south of Dog Area

The first WHITE-THROATED SPARROW was clearly a first-winter bird. As we came
back around the loop, we came across a(nother?) WTSP which had definite yellow
lores and whitish stripe and much less chest streaking than the first (though
it had some). I believe we had two different birds.

The FOX SPARROWS seemed to be very colorful today. Some that we saw well in
the East Meadow and at the compost piles had bicolored heads (red and gray),
with bright rufous tails, and wings and back of mottled gray and rufous. I'm
thinking that we had mostly "fulginosa" this winter, but that today we had
several "unalaschensis".

We had wonderful views of male DOWNY WOODPECKER and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET -
beautiful birds with the sun shining on them.

Besides the WESTERN MEADOWLARK, other *songs* noted were RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET,
MARSH WREN, BEWICK'S WREN, WINTER WREN, SONG SPARROW, GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW,
and FOX SPARROW.

The Indian Plum (a.k.a. Oso Berry) is beginning to bloom, and one lone
Salmonberry had about 5 blossoms. Can Rufous Hummingbird be far behind?

All told, 51 species on the day, bringing the year total to 74. New today were
CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE and RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, adding to the RED-BREASTED
SAPSUCKER and TOWNSEND'S WARBLER reported by Jim McCoy from last Thursday, and
the CALIFORNIA GULL, YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER, and HORNED LARK that I saw on
Friday.

BTW - If you write today's date European-style, it would be 20-02-2002.

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