Hello Tweeters,

Today there were a few interesting birds around - I saw the first three
Vaux's Swifts of the year this morning, right on schedule. Later in the day
I had a yard bird, a Savannah Sparrow was in one of the brush piles. They
breed nearby, but my yard itself is not their type of habitat. This one was
associating with a Gambell's White-crowned Sparrow, also unusual in my yard,
and both of them were trying to stay out of view from the breeding pair of
pugetensis White-crowns. On April 9th, four singing Fox Sparrows showed up
here. Two of them stayed until the next day, and one stayed and sung
constantly (chasing around the nesting juncos and acting very territorial)
until yesterday, when it finally decided to head north. This morning
Yellow-rumped Warblers were flying overhead at a great height in flocks of
5-10, up until about 9:00a.m. Two Varied Thrushes are still here, one a
typical female and one which has no trace of any breast band at all. I'd
never seen one like that before. Interestingly, both birds were singing
short, burry whistles.

A pair of Chestnut-backed Chickadees is building a nest; for the first 6
days they used exclusively green moss from the lawn, and since then have
been finding bits of dry grass and especially animal fur around the yard.
Today I saw one of them (I believe the female, the male was "singing" a
short ways off) defending the nest from the White-crowned Sparrow pair. It
would fly at them, and make a surprisingly loud hissing noise very much like
a large snake. After the chickadee did this about 5 times, the sparrows got
the message and flew to another area of the yard. This hiss is the same
noise I've heard females make on the nest while incubating, when disturbed.
But I'd never heard the noise outside of a cavity. That's all for now.

Cheers and good birding,
--
Charlie Wright
Sumner, WA
charlie at birdwright.com