Subject: Marymoor Park Report (Redmond, King Co., WA) 2004/02/04
Date: Feb 4 16:02:31 2004
From: Michael Hobbs - hummer at isomedia.com


Tweets - nine of us started out this morning under cloudy skies. There were
only a few short showers; otherwise the day was quite nice. Birds abounded
early, but after a couple of hours they became very scarce. Weird. The
water level in the weir and lake was very high, and even with high boots, we
could not get to the boardwalk, and we had to walk around. There was water
over the boardwalk in places, and evidence that recently the water has been
even higher.

Highlights:

Common Merganser One male out on the lake
DUNLIN Flock of about 20 flying around N end of
lake
Red-breasted Sapsucker MaryFrances had one near the mansion
Northern Shrike In exact same location as last week
Wh.-throated Sparrow Tan-stripe bird with GCSP early

Sparrows were especially numerous early on, with about 50 GOLDEN-CROWNED
SPARROWS in the flock with the WTSP. Lots of DARK-EYED JUNCOS were also
present. A second flock of GCSPs contained several WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS.
We ended up with pretty high counts for all the usual sparrows except that
we missed Lincoln's for the day. There weren't that many FOX SPARROWS
either, though the ones we saw gave us great looks.

Singing birds were in evidence again today - same species noted singing as
last week (though no Winter Wren this time), plus we heard a full-blown
AMERICAN ROBIN song.

Gulls were numerous and fairly diverse, with 50+ GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULLS (high
for Marymoor), and more than just a few RING-BILLED GULLS and CALIFORNIA
GULLS in with the hundreds of MEW GULLS. We didn't really scope through all
the gulls early in the morning - we might have been able to pull out a
Thayer's if we had.

For the day, 47 species. For the year, adding the Red-breasted Sapsucker,
we're now at 72 species. We're averaging 47 species and 7 birders so far in
2004.

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