Subject: [Tweeters] Baikal Teal 4/9 YES
Date: Apr 9 18:25:08 2005
From: Valerie Elliott - VElliott at msn.com


Several tenacious souls made a mostly sunny and breezy day of it at the 277th Ave wetlands to be rewarded at 4:30 with good views of the awesome male Baikal teal. Definitely worth the wait! John Thaw from Corvallis, OR spotted him and everyone present at the time and several people that arrived after the spot got good scope views of the teal. He was visible for about 15 minutes, preening and feeding, before kind of ducking (no pun intended) and hiding in the grass. He was located on the island(?) (brown grassy area in the water) area to the right of the directional arrow (cattails and broken glass) placed alongside the road last week. Boston, Maryland, Portland, Kirkland, and Seattle birders were also represented.

I heard that an immature bald eagle stirred up the ducks at around 10:00, but the teal wasn't spotted. From 11:30, when I arrived, until about 4:10 things were quite and sleepy. Then 2 mature bald eagles showed up. The ducks flew up, but the Baikal wasn't spotted. The eagles went to where a red-tailed hawk had dropped its kill, a bird, and the male flew off and ate it on a telephone pole. Shortly afterwards the female flew over to an adjacent pole. The female then flew down to a long thin grass bunker area, landed for a few seconds and flew back up to the pole with a still living crow that was soon devoured. All those ducks and she picked off a crow. We all found that interesting. Must be a healthy duck population this year. Just before John spotted the Baikal teal, we were watching 2 red-tailed hawks almost doing their sky dance. They had their legs down and talons bared, but never hooked up.

The road was very busy today. Traffic was speeding by. One birder barely missed getting rear ended making a left hand turn, probably illegal there, to park on the wetland side of the road. Remember to go to the intersections and turn there, it's a lot safer for everyone. Also we had many people inquiring as to what we were doing. Some of these people just stopped in the road. We should try to get them out of the road. Remember that if they get hit, they will probably careen into us and we'll lose a valuable birder.

Other birds scene at the wetlands include (in no order)

marsh wren
northern harrier
wood duck (seen by someone else)
gadwall
cinnamon teal
green-winged teal
ring-necked duck
northern pintails
northern shovelers
American coot
American widgeon
mallards

Valerie Elliott
Olympia, WA
VElliott at msn.com