Hey tweets, Re the questions recently posted about Spencer Island, I stopped
off there yesterday to do some birding and found that the access road
leading past the sewage plant building and into the little parking lot has
been closed to all traffic. According to the signs posted there, pedestrians
can still enter Spencer Island via a walkway that starts at the last parking
area before the closure (under the bridge). I declined to add the additional
mileage to my knees, but younger and more orthopaedically sound tweeters can
still have access to the reserve.

In the interests of full reporting, I must tell you that yesterday for me
was pretty much of a bust birding-wise. I was up in the northwestern part of
the state and decided to explore some of the state parks up there that are
never reported. Maybe I just picked the wrong day, but the birds I found in
Birch Bay State Park and other assorted parks south were nothing to write
home about. I did see a couple of harlequin ducks, always a nice bird to
watch. And I saw a merlin take a flicker (!), or at least try to. She
certainly struck at one of two flickers just settling into the top of snag.
But whether she succeeded in collecting her meal, I couldn't determine. Both
flickers tumbled down into the brush out of sight. I think one was hit and
the other scared stiff. But the brush was so thick I couldn't even tell if
the merlin circled back to check on her prey. I say "her" because the bird
looked to be big, but it might just as well have been a male merlin with big
ideas. Other than that, the birds I found were the same ones I could have
seen on the Tom Lord Nature Trail without all the driving.

Birding does occasionally deliver a blah experience - an outing so common,
tame and pedestrian that you can't even cry in your beer. Or if you do, no
one sympathizes. It's not like the epic time my husband and I tried to find
the bean goose, in weather that might have daunted Robert Byrd, only to have
the goose scared off by a thrice-cursed pack of dogs unleashed by an
uncaring, self-centered jerk just as we were about to focus in on it through
the horizontally driven rain... well, I have to pause now and breathe in a
bag for a while. No, yesterday was by no stretch of the imagination epic in
any way.

It is such times that truly try our character. I've read posts by tweeters
who have had days like this, and I have to admire their cheerfulness, their
ability to look on the bright side. I remember one such tweets saying
something like, "I didn't see any birds, but the day was beautiful and it
was great to be out there." Although I do admire people who can feel this
way, my gut reaction is, what's wrong with you people? Don't you know that
birding is all about seeing birds??? And not just little brown jobs.

But then I calm down and think about what I just said. For me, birding is
fun when I see birds, and it truly isn't much fun when I don't. But even I
realize that Nature is definitely not about letting Connie see birds. Nature
could care less, if Nature could be said to have a care. Nature is. Nothing
more, nothing less. I think we all have to be careful about viewing Nature
through the lens of our own desires. I know, for example, that Nature does
not exist for the gratification of dirt bikers or snowmobilers, who tear up
what they most love. But neither does Nature exist so that we humans can go
out and soak up its beauty, "treading lightly on the ground, taking nothing
in and nothing out." Etc. etc. etc. Nature is.

Unfortunately, letting Nature just be is becoming impossible. We humans have
too global an impact on our environment. We're everywhere and into
everything, kind of the E.coli of the big-animal kingdom. Because of us,
Nature is becoming a ward of the state. So I guess we really had better
think hard about how Nature can serve us. Or perhaps we should try to get
all of us together to think hard about how we can serve Nature. - Connie,
Seattle

csidles at isomedia

Here's my somewhat dismal list from yesterday:

common loon
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
mallard
harlequin duck
glaucous-winged gull
mew gull
pigeon guillemot
red-tailed hawk
merlin
rock dove
Vaux's swift
northern flicker
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
chestnut-backed chickadee
red-breasted nuthatch
American robin
European starling
marsh wren
spotted towhee
song sparrow
fox sparrow
Brewer's blackbird
house sparrow