Tweets - it was cold enough this morning, and sunny enough too, that we
spent our time moving from sunny spot to sunny spot, warming ourselves as we
went. The early fog burned off fairly quickly. By noon, we were shedding
layers as much as possible. For birds, there were few surprises early on,
but we ended up with an amazing SEVEN species of raptor to go along with
nine species of sparrow.

Best bird of the day was a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, the first confirmed Marymoor
sighting - flying south over soccer fields and Dog Meadow. I expect it's
over Enumclaw now. It gave us great looks, circling in the sky before
heading south. For most of the group, we got to watch it circling in front
of the face of the moon against a blue sky. WOW.

Other highlights:

Green Heron Still at least 1, near Rowing Club dock
Bald Eagle 2 adults at lake
Northern Harrier 1 over East Meadow
Sharp-shinned Hawk One perched, west side of slough
Cooper's Hawk One in Snag Row
Red-tailed Hawk About 3
Rough-legged Hawk See above
American Kestrel Followed RLHA south a few minutes later
Barn Owl Matt had 1 at 6:50AM, south end of East Meadow
Pileated Woodpecker One flew over RC dock late
NORTHERN SHRIKE Juvenile at Compost Piles, very active
Y.-rumped Warbler Ubiquitous - all noted were Myrtle's type
Wh.-throated Sparrow Two near the Dog Area portapotties
Purple Finch Lots of them, in the Ash trees

Misses - Gadwall and American Coot - we almost always have these this time
of year but not today.

Late on the walk, we had a bit of discussion about the seasonal occurrence
of GREEN HERON, and I had though we'd not had any in January and February,
but Matt was under the impression that at least a few over-winter in this
area. Well in looking at my data, over the last 12 years, we've had Green
Heron at least once in every week of the year except the 3rd week in
January, the 2nd and 3rd weeks of February, and the 2nd week of November.
So it definitely looks as if there is some tendency towards overwintering by
some small number of individuals. Of course, the number of sightings in
the November-early March timeframe is much lower than during the rest of the
year.

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