Hey tweets, Things were a little quiet around the Fill this morning. I
thought there might be a lot of activity, due to end of rain and
reappearance of sun, but no such luck. On the plus side, I saw zero
STARLINGS, which has got to be a new record.

One highlight: A HOUSE WREN, which I've seen only once before in nearly 20
years of birding at the Fill. It was in dense thickets at the point and
stubbornly did not want to come out. But when it did, it wasn't particularly
shy, so I got good looks. In fact, I had a three-wren day: MARSH WRENS and
BEWICK'S WRENS also put in appearances.

I always have mixed emotions when I see a bird out of its usual place, don't
you? On the one hand, it's a thrill for me to find an unexpected gem.
Remember how Johnny Depp's face would light up in "Pirates of the Caribbean"
whenever he saw the treasure? I'm sure my expression was exactly the same -
a kind of ooooo-ooooo of wonder to see such a surprise, added to a bit of
bleah-bleah of glee that I'm the one who found it. Can't beat that feeling.
On the other hand, I always wonder if the poor bird out of place is going to
get back on track. I imagine that house wren is migrating, so I hope it ends
up where it's supposed to. Dennis Paulson used to tell us that he has a
theory about vagrants: that some of them are exploring colonizers who are
the first to establish a claw-hold on new territory (my words; Dennis in a
million years would never say claw-hold). Some explorers are bound to
succeed, but others are doomed to perish. In the larger scheme of
geoecological time, I know that the survival of one house wren isn't going
to make much difference to the earth or to the species. But then I remember
the story about the woman who was picking up starfish that had washed up on
the beach and throwing them back into the sea. A man came up to her and
said, "You know, it doesn't matter to the survival of the species that you
are saving a few starfish." The woman, flinging another starfish back into
the ocean, answered, "Maybe not, but it matters to this starfish."

Here's everything I found today:

pied-billed grebe
great blue heron
Canada goose
mallard
wood duck
short-billed dowitcher
least sandpiper
rock pigeon
Vaux's swift
rufous hummingbird
downy woodpecker
violet-green swallow
cliff swallow
barn swallow
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
bushtit
house wren
Bewick's wren
marsh wren
American robin
cedar waxwing
common yellowthroat
spotted towhee
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
house sparrow
red-winged blackbird
house finch
American goldfinch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com