Franny - First, I'd say May 10 is a better date for first arrival. Most
years I have Marymoor records prior to the 15th, with the earliest record
being May 2, 2002. I have a whole cluster on the 9th. Note that I usually
only go once a week so I probably rarely catch the actual arrival date.

Departure seems a bit harder to pin down. For one thing, I think most of
the adults leave before the hatch-year birds, and the young tend to be quiet
and secretive. Here are the dates of last sighting for each of the last 9
years:

15-Aug-96
31-Aug-95
30-Aug-00
02-Sep-99
03-Sep-98
04-Sep-97
05-Sep-02
12-Sep-01
22-Sep-94

I suspect that a lot of the year-to-year difference has to do with our luck
in finding lingering juveniles as much as with a difference in final
departure date. It looks like usually they leave during the first week of
September, but a few may linger later.

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