Subject: Marymoor Park Report (Redmond, King Co., WA) 2004/02/18
Date: Feb 18 17:52:48 2004
From: Michael Hobbs - hummer at isomedia.com


Tweets - Eleven of us braved dark clouds and chilly winds on our rounds at
Marymoor today. The rain held off (only about 10 drops), but the birds did
too. It was a very slow day, though by the end we'd managed a respectable
count.

Highlights:

Amongst a flock of about 400 MEW GULLS and maybe 40 GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULLS,
Brian Bell found a THAYER'S GULL and a CALIFORNIA GULL. Several RING-BILLED
GULLS were also present.

We flushed two WILSON'S SNIPE from the east edge of the EAST MEADOW.

As we stood at the Rowing Club dock, we watched about 110 AMERICAN CROWS in
a noisy mob on the other side. They did NOT appear to be doing anything
though. They were not mobbing a hawk, nor was there an obvious food source.
They were simply making lots of noise and flying from perch to perch.
Weird.

A tan-stripe WHITE-THROATED SPARROW was again found in a flock of
GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS near the parkinglot early.

We had pretty good looks at a male PURPLE FINCH near the south end of the
dog area. There appeared to be several in the area.

Our best birding was northeast of the mansion, where we had a mixed flock of
AMERICAN ROBIN, EUROPEAN STARLING, and DARK-EYED JUNCOS on the ground, and
CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE, GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET, BROWN CREEPER,
RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, and a single RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER in the trees
above.

For the day, we finished with 45 species.

Thayer's Gull was new for the year list, bringing the total to 75 for 2004.

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