Tweets - It rained. And rained. And rained. For a while it stopped, and
then it rained again. Then the wind blew. Then the rain stopped, it got
somewhat sunny. Then there were clouds and huge gusts of wind. You get the
idea. It was NOT the ideal day for birding.

Still, there were a few things for the five of us who showed up in the rain
to see:

We had a lot of WOOD DUCKS, including a female with 15 ducklings, and
another female with a similar number. However, in this second group, about
half of the ducklings did not appear to be Wood Duck ducklings. They looked
to me like HOODED MERGANSER ducklings! They were, however, all apparently
the same age. Has anyone heard of this phenomenon?

COMMON MERGANSERS were flying around all morning (though perhaps no more
than 5 total). There was a female sitting atop one of the cottonwood snags
in Snag Row. Nesting perhaps?

We had a beautiful GREEN HERON fly up and down past the Rowing Club dock
while we were there.

Over the north end of the lake and the dog meadow, we had at least SEVENTEEN
BALD EAGLES, almost all sub-adult.

One SPOTTED SANDPIPER made a brief appearance near the weir.

We had several other species with newly fledged young:
Bushtit
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird
House Finch

We had our first SWAINSON'S THRUSH of the year, silently hopping around the
trail just south of the first footbridge.

A male BULLOCK'S ORIOLE made lots of noise but was hard to see at the Rowing
Club.

AMERICAN GOLDFINCH were abundant, everywhere, noisy, and pretty.

Other species included WARBLING VIREO (2-3), BROWN CREEPER (1), CEDAR
WAXWING (~5), YELLOW WARBLER (2-3, 1 seen), YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER (only 1
male Aud.), WILSON'S WARBLER (3-4), and BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK (5+).

For the day, we managed 52 species.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== birdmarymoor at verizon.net