Hey tweets, Today I had a yen to see warblers, my favorite birds. Even
dressed in autumnal plumage, they are magnificent. So I decided to have a go
at the Tom Lord Nature Trail. I don't know about you, but whenever I try to
get into a bird's brain to figure out where the birds will be or what
they'll be doing, I never succeed. I've read articles about how to read
weather maps and analyze the highs and lows, the wind patterns, the
temperature and sunshine/clouds, and then how to apply all this info to bird
behavior. Usually when I do this, the same thing happens to me as happens
when I get a hunch about a particular horse winning at Emerald Downs, or a
particular number coming up in the lottery. Aren't we feeling lucky today?
my brain asks itself, and then I get splashed with mud puddle water from
some passing bus. And that's on a good day.

So imagine my surprise when my hunch to bird the Tom Lord Nature Trail
turned out to be right on the money. The place was positively stuffed with
warblers. I don't think I've ever seen so many orange-crowneds. They were so
bold and open that I got great looks and was able to truly study the
variation in color (from almost lemon-yellow to dull brown), the differences
in stripiness, the different eyebrow and eye-ring colors, etc. In the
middles of all this study, what should pop up but a spectacular Townsend's
warbler, and then another. Meanwhile, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned
kinglets were everywhere, along with dueling Anna's, hordes of Bewick's
wrens, downy woodpeckers, red-breasted sapsuckers, bushtits, Steller's jays,
spotted towhees, sharp-shinned hawks, band-tailed pigeons, Vaux's swifts. It
was one of those days when your eyes start to bubble because your head is
turning so quickly to see another bird and another and another. I know I
missed some good ones in the mobs.

If you're interested in going on this trail, it's located not too far from
the Fill. Simply continue east on 45th street one block past 48th Avenue NE.
Turn left and go to the end of the block. Up on the hill to your right is
the Villa Academy, a Catholic school. At the end of the block (the north end
of the school), park and walk in through the open gate at the top of the
hill. The signs all say Private Property, but Auduboners have permission
from the Villa to bird here. Walk south on the entrance road and follow it
as it curves around to the east. You will see ahead of you a tennis court
and a soccer field, as well as a small orchard. On the northwest corner of
the orchard is a small shed. Just north of this shed is the entrance to the
Tom Lord Nature Trail. It's marked with a sign and has a chain across it to
keep cars out. It's really an unused road, not a trail. You can follow it
all the way down to the lake, but the best woodsy birding is on the upper
parts of the road, wherever the sunshine warms the trees.

The conifers at the entrance to the Villa are good for kinglets, bushtits,
creepers, nuthatches, juncos, woodpeckers and varied thrushes (in the
winter). The orchard is good for warblers, vireos and thrushes (hermit and
Swainson's). The trail itself is great for birds that are otherwise a bit
hard to find in the city: fox sparrows, band-tailed pigeons, tanagers,
grosbeaks, woodpeckers, barn owl, etc.

Here's what I found today:
sharp-shinned hawk
rock dove
band-tailed pigeon
Vaux's swift
Anna's hummingbird
northern flicker
downy woodpecker
Pacific slope flycatcher
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
bushtit
red-breasted nuthatch
house wren
Bewick's wren
golden-crowned kinglet
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
European starling
orange-crowned warbler
Townsend's warbler
spotted towhee
fox sparrow
song sparrow
American goldfinch
house finch

By the way, yesterday at the Fill there was an American pipit strutting
around the main pond, and that whopping big peregrine showed up again. Also,
I was down at the point, watching a great blue heron stab a fish when I
heard a tremendous splash. I was just in time to see an osprey shake the
water off its feathers and rise with a fish in its foot. The two events made
me think about how birds catch fish to eat. Some birds, such as cormorants,
loons, etc., chase fish down and catch them. Some birds dive from above and
catch fish with their bills. Some grab with their feet. But the heron seems
to do so much better than all the other birds - more fish, bigger fish, more
reliable catches. Yet, all the fish-eating birds seem to do so much better
than the bird-catching birds. You'd think that the difficulty of reliably
catching food would severely limit speciation. Yet we have this incredible
diversity: just about any food niche that can be filled is filled, and the
few that are empty (pine needle eaters; pronghorn antelope eaters) used to
be filled before a quirk of extinction emptied them. These thoughts give me
hope that whatever we humans do to squeeze species down to nothing or less
now, nature will eventually spring back and fill the niches again when we're
gone. Of course, I am selfish and want to see all the current species as is,
since each one is the product of millions of years of brutal but rigidly
careful selection, a true sonata of life. But whenever I get discouraged
about the environmental impact of humanity, I remind myself that nature and
life are far stronger than we know. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com