Hey tweets, before all this rain moved in (and made mundane work a heckuva
lot more palatable), I was at the Fill and saw three birds with three
different approaches to one of life's problems: the need to hide.

A COMMON YELLOWTHROAT, down from the north, I think, was foraging in a bush
just inches from my head. I knew he was in there because I could hear him
chipping. But although I could see light all the way through the bush, I
could not see that bird. I wasn't really surprised. The bush was deciduous,
with leaves of gold, olive, and green, and the yellowthroat blended in
perfectly. When I first started birding, I figured that warblers with a lot
of yellow on them would be extremely difficult to see in the fall but
ridiculously easy to see in the spring. Their yellow would make them glow
against the green of new leaves but fade into the background of fall golds.
I was only partly right. Yellow-colored warblers are fiendishly difficult to
see no matter the season. Who would have thought that a color as bold as
yellow would be so nondescript? In our world, we use yellow to blare: school
bus, crosswalk, bicyclist, stoplight about to change to red, eat this oaten
cereal. But in nature, yellow conceals.

A WILSON'S SNIPE flew from the east side of the main pond to the west side,
landed, and promptly disappeared into the mud and scrub. I snaked my way to
the spot where it had landed, thinking that it had probably wasted no time
in walking rapidly away to another spot. But no, there it was, glued to its
landing site. I just couldn't see it until I was almost on top of it. I had
set down my camp stool behind a stalk of loosestrife so I could watch the
green-winged teals foraging on the pond, and I began to get a creepy feeling
that someone was watching me. Trying not to be paranoid, I looked around and
discovered the snipe's comical eyes on top of its head, both rolled over to
stare at me. The bird's feathers did more than merely break up the light and
shadow to make the snipe hard to see. Rather, its brown/white/black pattern
of stripes and splotches so perfectly matched its surroundings that even
from six feet away, I could barely make it out. During WWII, scientists
experimented with camouflage at sea. One of the oddest attempts involved
painting garish combinations of dark/light zigzags on the sides of large
ships. Looking at photos of these pied ships, you'd think they would stand
out like a Puritan in a sea of brocaded Cavaliers. But apparently something
about the lack of pattern broke up the ships' outline and made them very
hard to see on the water. Zebras come to mind. Still, the Navy must have
found that plain gray blended in with the ocean and worked best of all.

While I was sitting at the main pond exchanging glances with the snipe and
marveling at its camos, the GREEN HERON that has been hanging out on the
main pond flew in and landed on a low branch just above the water. Its
stripy underparts must look like twigs and branches to the fish in the
water, while its green and brown upperparts make it disappear into the
foliage when viewed from above - the perfect combination of colors for a
bird that is both predator and prey.

Dennis Paulson told the master birder class this week that he has become
quite interested in the coloration of birds. The pigment in feathers can
serve so many purposes: it can protect the feather structure from the
destructive UV radiation of the sun; it can conceal the bird; it can reveal
the suitor; it can signal fellow flock-flyers. Makes you wonder why mammals
are so dull.

Here's everything I saw at the Fill that day (no swifts, no swallows):
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
green heron
Canada goose
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
northern shoveler
wood duck
ring-necked duck
American coot
Wilson's snipe
glaucous-winged gull
osprey
Anna's hummingbird
belted kingfisher
northern flicker
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
marsh wren
Bewick's wren
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler
common yellowthroat
spotted towhee
savannah sparrow
song sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
red-winged blackbird
American goldfinch
house sparrow
- Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com