Hey tweets, Long time, no write. I've been chained to my desk or to my dust
bunnies for the past several weeks, while who knows what has been happening
at the Fill without me. But yesterday, when no one was looking (all our
teenagers-home-for-the-holidays being, like most teenagers, asleep until
noon), my husband and I tiptoed out the door and spent a glorious two hours
trying to see every single species at the Fill. We went to places even I
didn't know existed, such as a little riparian slough alongside the golfers'
driving range, where we found four flickers hanging out, including two
YELLOW-SHAFTED and one orange intergrade, as well as a beautiful male DOWNY
slamming away at a snag so hard it's a wonder he has any brains left at all.
This strikes me as a good place to look for flycatchers in the spring, as
well as migrating warblers.

We also drove along a little-known drive that snakes east of the new
football-punters' gym, where we found a BELTED KINGFISHER and closeup views
of LESSER SCAUP. This is the site where the kingfishers have traditionally
been, but I thought the new building would have driven them away. Not so,
which heartens me, given how much we ask of wildlife to fill in around the
meager edges we leave them. I'm always glad when I find a species is more
flexible than I had realized, since pristineness (pristinity?) is getting
mighty hard to come by.

The CUH has been hard at work reforming the blackberry bushes to the east of
the greenhouses. The area is now almost completely free of stickers (alas
for the sparrows) and has been covered with chips and trails. You can now
walk easily down to the lake. The CUH has left quite a bit of brush and
trees, so we found SPOTTED TOWHEES, RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS, several ANNA'S
HUMMINGBIRDS, BUSHTITS and YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS. Band-tailed pigeons like
to hang out here, too, although I didn't see any yesterday.

My favorite spots of the day, however, were two LINCOLN'S SPARROWS down at
the point by the dead beaver snags and an immature BALD EAGLE with so much
white scattered about on him that he's got to be a newby, not to mention his
lack of hunting skills. He tried buzzing a flock of coots, which dutifully
ran along the water surface, but that's all the effect the poor eagle
created. What was he thinking? There are plenty of fish to be caught in the
water, as evidenced by my favorite GREAT BLUE HERON, who likes to catch
catfish and then prepare them for dining in a little bowl near shore created
by vegetation and low water levels.

Here's a list of everything we found (41 species altogether, which I think
is pretty amazing on a two-hour trek at the end of December):
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
Canada goose
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern shoveler
ruddy duck
ring-necked duck
lesser scaup
bufflehead
American coot
ring-billed gull
mew gull
glaucous-winged gull
bald eagle
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird
belted kingfisher
northern flicker (red-, yellow, orange-shafted)
downy woodpecker
Steller's jay
American crow
bushtit
black-capped chickadee
Bewick's wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler
spotted towhee
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
Lincoln's sparrow
red-winged blackbird
house sparrow
American goldfinch
house finch

-Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com