11:30am start - water level quite low, with incoming tide (11:00 low at
2.9ft; 17:01 high at 11.3ft); all mudflats visible
12:07pm end

Tweeters,
Cloudless, with a crisp northerly breeze, and just a bit of haze left
over from this morning's fog here at Turning Basin #3. Some of the usual
suspects about today, including lots of MEW and GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULLS,
plus a few RING-BILLED GULLS thrown in for good measure, most of which
were bathing, preening, or snoozing on the mudflat near the
goose-exclusion area on the south part of TB3. One of the gulls could
have been a Herring Gull, but the distance and lighting conditions made
it almost impossible to positively ID. (It's definitely tough going in
pulling in the longer-distance birds: my scope is in the shop getting
the focusing mechanism fixed. Has anyone else out there had problems
with the new Pentax? (Replies directly, please.))

My biggest surprise today was seeing a turtle (about 8" in diameter)
head-above water and just hanging there in the shallows below me. A red
stripe alongside the head behind the eyes, and stripey dark and light
under the neck made it to be a probable red-eared slider. A couple of
folks I talked with several weeks ago mentioned they'd recently seen a
turtle on a piece of concrete on the mudflat below them. Could be the
same critter.

Birds seen during this scan include the following:
Domestic goose
Canada Goose (3)
Mallard (6)
Common Merganser (5)
Double-crested Cormorant
Mew Gull (19)
Ring-billed Gull (4)
Glaucous-winged Gull (28)
Rock Pigeon (31)
American Crow (20)
Black-capped Chickadee (definitely--no MOCH here)
American Robin
European Starling (4)
Song Sparrow (2)
House Finch (2)
House Sparrow (2)

May all your birds be identified,

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