Tweets - Nine of us were out there birding this morning, though the size and
composition of our group was constantly changing. The morning began foggy
and damp (but no rain). By 9:30 it was a glorious sunny morning, but over
the next few hours, new clouds gathered.

There were quite a few birds about most of the day, but the species
diversity was not that great. There were some surprizes and good sightings
however:

Cackling Goose Perhaps 30 with Canadas
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1-2; Brian had a very close viewing of 1
Cooper's Hawk 1-2 adults, maybe also an imm. (or was it SSHA?)
California Quail Had 1 run between clumps of blackberry
Virgina Rail Heard 4-5 at 2 locations
Wilson's Snipe 4 at north Rowing Club pond
Northern Shrike Nice adult in East Meadow (thanks Nancy)
Common Raven Heard (then drowned out by traffic noise)

The CACKLING GEESE were in the grass and gravel parking lot north of the
grass soccer fields. One or two looked to be Aleutian subspecies. Others
seemed pretty clearly to be CACG, but I'm uncertain as to subspecies. I
think some of them were at the large end of the Cackler species, but I am
not as familiar with those subspecies. They were all smaller, darker and
had much shorter necks and bills than the CANGs.

We did OK on ducks, with Gadwall (1 unless Brian had more), American Wigeon
(2?), Mallard (~12), Green-winged Teal (3), Bufflehead (~20), Hooded
Merganser (2-4), and Common Merganser (~8). But duck numbers at the north
end of Lake Sammamish do not seem to be nearly as high as they were years
ago. Aythya spp. have been almost completely absent (scaup, Ring-necks,
Canvasback, Redhead)

We had many encounters with accipiters, which may have contributed to our
low count of sparrows (only 5 species). Many of our accipiter sightings had
to be left as accipiter sp., as we just didn't get the looks we'd like to
have. But we got 2 great, close sightings of adult Cooper's Hawk (possibly
the same one, but it would have had to follow us quite a ways if so), and
Brian had a great look at a Sharpie. My guess is probably that we had 5
accipiter individuals, including adults of both species and one immature.

The RAVEN hearing (since we didn't see it) was very frustrating. The fog
was carrying sounds pretty far. I thought I heard a raven, thought I heard
one again, mentioned it and Tina said *she'd* thought she'd heard one but
didn't want to mention it since she wasn't sure. Then several of us heard
again a distant call. Then a noisy truck went down West Lake Samm. Parkway.
Then I heard the raven pretty well, if briefly. Then the park garbage team
drove up in their loud pickup, and nothing more could be heard.

We had 5 rather red salmon at one of the dog swim areas.

Grace and Ollie Olliver also reported a GREEN HERON at the south Rowing Club
pond, I believe on 11/27.

In all, a pretty nice morning birding, but not too much to get the
excitement up. We finished with 52 species for the day, 53 for the week,
and 145 for the year.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== hummer at isomedia.com