A few minutes ago I glanced out the window and saw a Red-breasted
Sapsucker hitching up a small birch tree in my back yard, a species
I've seen only a couple of times in the 15 years we've lived here. It
flew to a Douglas-fir about a foot in diameter in the neighbor's yard
and looked as if it were excavating a sap well. As I watched it, a
Brown Creeper landed on the tree right below it, the first one I've
ever seen here and one of the most common western WA passerine birds
not yet on our yard list. What a thrill, as I've always assumed the
trees in our yard were too small, and I can't see most of the big
trees around here any more because our own planted yard has grown up
too tall. I presume both of these birds are migrants, and I always
wonder how much I'm missing when I'm not looking out the window!

Perhaps because the trees and shrubs in the yard have grown up so
densely, we have two wintering Fox Sparrows, also unprecedented.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net

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