11:03am start - water level low with outgoing tide (-0.18 at 12:25pm); all mudflats visible and getting more so.
11:58am end

Tweeters,
Just another fine, warm day here at Turning Basin #3 (TB3), with bright sunshine, and almost no breeze. A GREEN HERON, the first I've seen near TB3, was catching prey along the west edge of the river, just upstream of the Boeing bridge. I spotted the heron as it walked on a log, but the frontal foreshortened view gave me pause in identifying it for a few seconds until it turned to the side. It hop-stepped off the log to the mud, and hunted along the edge to the area near the bridge supports, whereupon I lost sight of it.

I hadn't spotted any Canada geese until about 11:30, when five of them paddled upstream across TB3. With them, like a minesweeper alongside battleships, was a WOOD DUCK, most probably the same as I first saw Aug 17. The group went to the south side of TB3, with the WODU feeding just off the mudflat. At about 11:50, the geese and WODU paddled back north across TB3, heading downstream, passing by another flock of geese. It was very apparent that the duck was accompanying the group-of-five geese, and it didn't veer off course from the five when the flock passed another, in-paddling flock.

The first BUSHTITS (18 of them) I've seen here since May 14 pump-flew by me across an open area between butterfly bush patches.

No shorebirds seen today.

Birds seen during this scan include the following:
Canada Goose (12)
Wood Duck
Mallard (19)
Common Merganser (5)
Double-crested Cormorant (2)
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Osprey (1 only at TB3 on the piling extension near the Quonset hut, then flew to the west power tower)
Ring-billed Gull (very actively feeding near the restoration area)
Glaucous-winged Gull (15)
Rock Pigeon (37)
Belted Kingfisher
American Crow (16; only three were seen initially, but more showed up as the water level dropped)
Black-capped Chickadee (3)
Bushtit (18)
European Starling (500; difficult to really tell the number, but two rather large flocks were in the area; they broke apart and reformed many times during this scan)

May all your birds be identified,

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