Tweets - it was fairly miserable out there today, although it wasn't too
cold (which would have been brutal). With rain pants on, it was manageable.
It was also wet. The rain was on-and-off; we had blue sky on several
occasions, often while it was raining. Sometimes it rained HARD, but there
was a significant part of the morning without rain too. The water level in
the slough was at a hair under 6 feet, up from 5.3 feet last week. This
means there is at least 2 feet of water over parts of the trail. We could
barely get south of the dog area along the slough trail. We did manage to
get to the lake platform, but the trail was underwater starting well before
the boardwalk, and the entire boardwalk was under 6-12" of water. Much of
the interior dog meadow is ponded, making a good spot for ducks.

Bob, visiting from Syracuse, NY, is hereby named "Intrepid", staying with us
the whole morning, and wading out to the lake platform *without rubber
boots*.

The day's species count wasn't nearly as good as the last two weeks, but
what do you expect ???

Highlights:

Cackling Goose 2 LARGE flyover flocks + 30 on fields
Wood Duck 3 males, 1 female swimming the trail
American Wigeon At least 3 in the dog meadow ponds
Common Goldeneye Male flying north - first of fall
Peregrine Falcon Quick view over dog ponds
Barn Owl Matt had one early over East Meadow
Pine Siskin One fairly large flock seen twice

I'm sure we had our highest count ever of CACKLING GEESE, with two huge
flocks flying south over the slough, and several more in a third flock mixed
with Canadas. An additional group of around 30 on the grass soccer fields
gave us some good looks. They appeared to comprise 2-3 subspecies; probable
Cackling and Aleutian, and maybe Taverner's as well. Bob got some photos;
maybe we can work it out from them. Maybe 200 birds total ???

The saddest sighting: Bob, while trying to photograph the Cacklers, found
the body of a recently deceased SHORT-EARED OWL along the ditch line
separating the grass soccer fields. We salvaged the body for the Burke.
There was no obvious sign of injury; I suspect the bird succumbed to hunger
during this stretch of bad weather.

Fun find - Matt and I thought we might have heard a BROWN CREEPER, but we
didn't search (it was WINDY at the time). Ollie, putting his thinking cap
on, decided that if there was a creeper, it would be on the lee side of the
trunk. Voila.

Toughest find - looking up Into the Wind and Rain at the edge of the
Mansion-area conifers, Matt thought he heard the call of a Townsend's
Warbler, and then managed to get all of us on the bird 40 feet up in the
tree.

For the day, we managed about 50 species (counting 1-2 barely heard birds
and a dead owl) OK - maybe officially that's 49.

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

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts" - Bertrand
Russell