Tweets,
This hot (88 degrees at noon here) Tuesday, with an incoming tide, brought one big surprise: a female DOWNY WOODPECKER feeding on a birch tree just outside the fence on my (east) side of the river. Only occasionally have I seen Northern Flickers on this campus, but certainly never any other woodpecker species. I saw the Downy first hammering on a dead blackberry vine that hung on one of the lower branches of the birch. It sporatically searched the vine, then parts of the birch. Twice, it spent time preening and sunning (spread wings, head up, body stretched along a branch at one point, then perpendicular to it at another point). Twice, it scooted to the side on the tree opposite that of a noisy flock of EUROPEAN STARLINGS that passed by. The woodpecker was on the tree the entire time (30 mins) that I spent outside. Note: This part of the Boeing campus has very few trees, and most of them are small birches outside the chain-link/barbed wire perimeter fence.

I saw only one OSPREY nestling and one adult on the nest; however, the second nestling could well have been behind the other. Birds seen included the following:

Great Blue Heron
Canada Goose (9)
Mallard
Common Merganser
Osprey (2)
Killdeer
Glaucous-winged Gull (10, including one feeding on the head of a large fish)
Rock Dove (8)
Downy Woodpecker
American Crow (4)
Barn Swallow
Bushtit (3)
Bewick's Wren
European Starling (>100, of which one flock was >60 birds)
House Finch

May all your birds be identified,

Denis DeSilvis
Seattle, WA
denis.j.desilvis at boeing.com