Tweeters:

Although I never was able to listen to the recording of the Issaquah bird,
it sounds as though reviews as to i.d. are mixed. I too find myself noting
that late March Swainson's Thrushes are unprecedented for wWA. It was not
so long ago that we had only a very few reports for April (Skagit County,
for example, had three reports in the last decade, the earliest April 12
from the Skagit WMA). Still, as others have observed, normal first arrivals
are in the first decade of May, some years not until mid-May, and usually
those first birds give just the "whit" call note before beginning with the
well-known songs...In my 30+ years of birding in wWA, I've had just two
April birds, in the last decade of the month. May arrival corresponds, one
notes, with other neotropicals that winter in S. America. In this vein, I
noted that the observer casually stated that a friend had bird overwintering
in AZ--yet overwinterers there are just as unusual as late March birds here,
require outstanding documentation, etc. Does any one know if this record
was documented?

So late March reports here are just as extraordinary, not only because they
are record-early, but also because they would eclipse existing record-earlys
not just by a few days (as usually is the case with new migrant record-early
dates), but in this case by over two weeks! Even allowing for the global
warming argument, it is also interesting that a sweep of birdingonthe.net
listservs show that no Swainson's have been reported yet (correct me if I
missed something) from sites far to the south of us, like s. AZ or CA, and
in s. Texas (from which I just returned), one-two Swainson's have only been
reported in the last week. It does seem a bit strange that we would have
multiple birds before they even pass through a migrant funnel like extreme
south Texas....

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
mail to: scottratkinson at hotmail.com

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