Subject: Full at Fill
Date: Jul 13 10:31:53 2003
From: Connie Sidles - csidles at isomedia.com


Hey tweets, Sorry for this late post. But I'd still like to catch you up on
Fill doings over the past three days. I almost didn't go to the Fill day
before yesterday because summer had come back in all its fury. I spent most
of the day holed up in my basement, feeling like a mole but at least a cool
mole. The thought of going out into the blast furnace to see birds I've
already seen a million times was just too much. But then I realized that
that was the tired, old, stick-in-the-mud Connie talking, not the engaged,
dynamic, ready-for-anything Connie. I remember Ricky Young, one of the
region's most respected surfers, telling me one day, "If you do something,
then something happens; if you do nothing, then nothing happens."

In other words, if you put up with the drudgery of birding (getting up
before dawn, getting up before the local donut shop is even open for God's
sake, hauling your heavy scope around until you think the groove it's
digging into your shoulder will make you the best candidate for Igor if Gene
Wilder should ever want to do a remake of "Young Frankenstein," freezing
your tuckus off in the cold or boiling your orbs away in the heat as you try
to squint through the superheated air - well, you get the picture), then
sometimes all you get is the drudgery. We've all been on birding trips from
hell that never produce the birds we're hoping for. Heck, I've been on trips
where I was lucky to see even A bird at all. On the other hand, we've also
all been on trips that were pure magic. And the magical trips far outweigh
the hellish ones, both in quality and in number. So you can never be sure
when you start on a birding trip that you'll see anything exciting, although
you can always hope. On the other hand, you can be absolutely sure that if
you don't go, you won't see a thing.

So with that thought in mind, I hauled my tired carcass out the door and
went to my favorite place on earth. Sure enough, when I arrived at about 6
p.m., the place was blazing hot. I staggered as far as the Wedding Rock (a
matter of maybe 30 feet) and collapsed, hoping that the birds would come to
me. There wasn't even a swallow to be seen. I sat there inertly for an hour
or so until Stuart McKay appeared out of the local black hole to tell me
what he had seen on the main pond: osprey, Cooper's hawk, least sandpiper,
dowitchers, harrier, etc. etc. etc. Gradually as we spoke about birding,
life and geezerhood, the sun sank and the air cooled. Cedar waxwings began
to show up, a downy came by and hunted for bugs just a few feet away, and we
could hear many birds off in the distance. I set out.

The longer I stayed, the more birds came. VAUX'S SWIFTS were swooping so low
and so close to me that I could see their beady little eyes as they flew
past. "You go, guys," I said, realizing that they were eating the bugs that
I attracted. On the main pond was the HARRIER, perched on the ground and
eating something. "No shorebirds here," I thought, but I was wrong. There
were two LEASTS, numerous KILLDEER and a GREATER YELLOWLEGS. They were
glorious. I sat on my favorite log, now blessedly free from mud because the
pond is shrinking, and watched them forage until the sky turned magenta. I
was screened from them enough so that they paid no attention to me at all.
When this sort of thing happens, it always makes me feel like I am truly a
part of their world. A mystic might call it being at one with nature. I am
not pretentious enough to say that, because I am the opposite of mystic, but
between you and me, that is exactly how I felt.

Here's a list of everything I found:
pied-billed grebe
great blue heron
Canada goose
gadwall
mallard
bald eagle
northern harrier
ring-necked pheasant
American coot
killdeer
greater yellowlegs
least sandpiper
glaucous-winged gull
western gull (I think - the light was not the greatest; this would be rare
at the Fill, especially now; but this gull was definitely not
glaucous-winged, nor California, nor ring-billed nor anything obvious; has
anyone else seen westerns around?)
Vaux's swift
rufous hummingbird
belted kingfisher (Silent Cal, perched on the dead beaver snag)
downy woodpecker
northern flicker
warbling vireo
American crow
tree swallow
violet-green swallow
cliff swallow
barn swallow
black-capped chickadee
bushtit
marsh wren
American robin
European starling
cedar waxwing
common yellowthroat
savannah sparrow
song sparrow
red-winged blackbird
brown-headed cowbird
houe finch
American goldfinch

Last night I returned to the Fill under very different conditions: high
wind, heavy clouds, a much-reduced temperature, thank goodness. In addition
to the usual suspects, I can report that the harrier and yellowlegs were
still present, along with two new dowitchers (my guess is short-billed, but
they did not call), and, wonder of wonders, an AMERICAN WIGEON on Union Bay.
Also the WOOD DUCKS were out there again. On the main pond was the
RING-NECKED DUCK who has been hanging around but not always obviously. The
ducks are starting to return! - Connie Sidles, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com