Tweets - strange weather makes for strange birds. Today, despite, or
perhaps because, of the winds, we had trouble finding some "common" birds,
and we had a lot of unexpected birds. Amazingly, we had a pretty large
group of people - 10 of us came out on a day with rather threatening
weather. Equally amazing was that the rain held off.

Highlights:

Green Heron 1-2 seen. 24th straight week we've seen GRHE
TURKEY VULTURE 1 flying south. Only 3rd sighting ever.
Sharp-shinned Hawk Imm. stooping at swallows
Cooper's Hawk Several looks, including messing with falcons
American Kestrel Nice male in snag row begin chased around by:
Merlin Rather pale bird - Richardsonii?
California Quail Male at parking lot
BONAPARTE'S GULL 1 first-winter bird over lake
Black Swift 20-25 over boardwalk
Vaux's Swift 20+
HORNED LARK In dog meadow
Orange-cr. Warbler Several seen
Yellow Warbler Maybe as many as 5
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1 at Rowing Club
Black-thr. Gray Warbler ditto
Golden-crowned Sparrow First of fall
LAPLAND LONGSPUR 4 in dog meadow with Horned Lark

The day started with a Cooper's Hawk chasing a Sharp-shinned Hawk, with the
California Quail landing right in front of us while we were trying to
hawkwatch. It was that kind of day.

We had a Sharpie chasing a Red-tail, and the Merlin chasing the Kestrel, and
then both of them taking time out to divebomb a Cooper's. It was just our
4th fall kestrel sighting.

As I said, this was just our 3rd TURKEY VULTURE sighting, the others being
the 19th of May, 2000, and September 22, 2001.

When we got to the trail along the east side of the dog meadow, I happened
to see what turned out to be the HORNED LARK land in the grass. It was a
very pale and drab individual, with no yellow tones at all, and all of the
black markings rather smudged out. While we were trying to get better looks
we flushed four sparrow-like birds which were richly colored and had white
outer tail feathers. I went out on a limb and called out "LAPLAND LONGSPUR,
I think" - a state bird for me, and the first time I've seen them in
non-breeding plumage. We kind of chased them around the meadow for a while
before they finally landed somewhere where we could get good looks. Very
pretty birds, and there was a wide variation in plumages, presumably age and
gender related.

Amazingly, it was six hours before we found a single MALLARD and a single
DOWNY WOODPECKER. And we missed several species usually fairly easy to find
at the time of year, including Wood Duck, Gadwall, American Coot, Swainson's
Thrush, and Purple Finch.

For the day, 59 species. Adding Turkey Vulture, Bonaparte's Gull, Horned
Lark, and Lapland Longspur, the year list is now 136 species.

It was a good day!

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