Hi folks

This is getting to be my favorite time of year. For family reasons I rarely
stray from Ballard to bird, but I bird wherever I go. I love seeing the
Double-crested Cormorants back - although there was one with a broken wing
that summered at the locks, it could swim and dive fine but couldn't fly -
Wigeons and Mergansers are starting to come back and there were a pair of
Alcids flying around Shilshole Bay this morning. There are still a handful
of Kingfishers at the locks, the juv female still poses nicely only a few
feet from us tourists but Dad keeps a 40 to 50 foot cushion. Sometimes they
go into "treetop" mode and pick two nearby trees. They perch and chatter at
each other until one of them displaces the other and they switch trees,
almost always the same two trees, I'm getting to know all their favorite
perches and I may still do a web page on the geometric patterns of Belted
Kingfisher poop on the Commodore Park sidewalks. We watched Dad (Ol' Flat
top) catch and eat a 4 inch fish that looked like a smolt this morning. He
perched on the spillway cable and whacked it on the cable for about ten
minutes before eating it, it was half his length.

There's also a steady flow of Steller's Jays, 20 or so a visit, flying S
across the canal from the locks or the new Salmon Bay Natural Area to the
BNSF RR green belt.

I also wanted to mention an unusual looking Mallard at the Golden Gardens
Pond. A dark green head with no neck ring, just some spotty white at the
back of the head/nape. A smallish black bill with a lighter tip and a jet
black body with uneven iridescent green, blue purple and brown patches on
the wings/back. The breast and what I could see of the belly looked black.
I've never seen it standing up, but while swimming the legs looked a very
pale orange, much paler than the usual Mallard when viewed underwater. It
was making a soft quacking noise and had curly tail feathers. As usual it's
never there when I have my camera.
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Cliff Drake
SW Ballard, Seattle, WA
cliff at cliffdrake.net