Hey tweets, after a long illness and much, much work, I returned to my
beloved Fill yesterday to find the hugest herd of Cacklers I've ever seen
there: more than 100 geese in two or three separate groups. (Not all were
cacklers; but most were.) Among the group nearest the point was a GREATER
WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. Now, I don't know if this particular goose was into
race-walking or not, but I saw one in three separate locations yesterday:
at the point, on the main pond, and near the restored pond by the dime
parking lot. If it's the same goose, then it's one who likes to hot foot
it around the site. I felt like I was continuously turning the page in a
"Where's Waldo" book, and there he was.

Also on view: an OSPREY hovering over the slough. I got to see it station
itself over water two times before a crow decided that was enough and
chased it off. The BARN SWALLOWS are back, and so are tree TREE SWALLOWS.
The CUH folks have put up numerous tree swallow boxes near the dime
parking lot. The tree swallows are thrilled. There is a respectable
conglomeration of them moving in now. I'm so glad because their favorite
nesting tree, the snag at the point, fell down in one of our numerous wind
storms this past winter. (And doesn't it feel just grand to be able to say
that winter is past?)

It looks like it's going to be a big year for BUSHTITS - I've seen many
pairs rushing around looking for nesting materials; the go-getters already
have their baskets built. Five AMERICAN PIPITS are also in the area. No
shorebirds yet, but I'm hoping.

CUH people were hard at work refining the habitat they've established near
the west end of Wahkiakum Trail. They've installed numerous fast-growing,
native trees, interspersed with manmade snags and log piles. It all looked
pretty silly when they first put the snags in - they're really short, for
one thing. But now that plants are beginning to grow, it looks much
better. The birds seem to like it. Feeding flocks of chickadees, kinglets,
bushtits, and yellow-rumped warblers pay visits often. Sparrows (song,
white-crowned, golden-crowned) scratch here, too. I suspect over time, as
the wood begins to rot, that other birds will find pleasing habitat.

None of this stuff is natural, if by "natural" you mean "the nature that
used to be here." The CUH signs describe the "restoration" that people are
doing, but if they really wanted to be accurate about it, they would let
the lake back in. This area was mostly underwater before the Montlake Cut
was built.

But I'm no purist when it comes to putting things back the way they were.
I mean, how far back would you roll the clock? I've asked my physicist
husband to make time-travel his next big research project - I want to see
whether T. rex was a predator or a scavenger and whether it really did
walk bent over. I want to see the flightless geese of Hawaii, and the big
lava ocean that was eastern Washington. I want to watch great auks, and I
wouldn't mind a mastodon or two. And how about them dire wolves?

But the world keeps rotating, and change has always been the order of the
day. There is no going back, only forward.

Sometimes I think (I wish!) that the big task of the 21st century will be
for people to preserve as much species diversity as we can. I look at the
aspirations of people all around the globe who don't have much and yearn
to have more - like we already do - and I see that the natural world is
going to come under unprecedented stress. It seems to me that the only way
we're going to save any species at all is if we hurry up and learn
everything we can about how ecosystems work so that we can apply it in as
many places as possible. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that wild
lands will become big parks that are managed with skill. That may sound
kind of dismal (it does to me), but the alternative of untrammeled
development and no commitment to nature seems far worse. It reminds me of
a science fiction story I read years ago about the last robin, an elderly
bird that was carefully monitored by videocams and given every amenity
that humans could devise - until it simply died of old age. No more birds.
Kaput.

After reading this story, I sincerely hoped that truth is stranger than
fiction. And maybe it is.
I was talking to one of the CUH gardeners yesterday about her work near
the dime parking lot. I complimented her on her efforts to make the place
more inviting for birds, with some success. She seemed to be a lot more
knowledgeable about birds than I was about gardening. But it was her focus
that I appreciated most. She really cared about making a better habitat
for the birds.

As I sat on a downed log, watching the tree swallows investigate their new
houses, I thought about how far these tiny birds have flown to get here.
Given that their old nest site had fallen down, I felt chirked up that
they had new houses waiting for them to move in. What a shame it would
have been if they had come all this way for nothing. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com