Hey tweets, today was a three-grebe day at the Fill. I found a WESTERN
GREBE fishing in Union Bay; a HORNED GREBE on the main pond (this one has
been hanging out there now for a few days); and of course many PIED-BILLED
GREBES scattered around the ponds and lake, including one young 'un that
still had a few zebra stripes.

Seeing the two unusual grebes today made me think of how people used to
worry about whether the summer would ever come back after a long winter,
or whether the sun would keep rising in the morning.

I know intellectually that western grebes and horned grebes and eared
grebes will return to Seattle in the fall in order to overwinter. I
learned in my master birder classes where these grebes go in the spring in
order to breed. But somehow when these birds depart Seattle for their
breeding grounds, they seem to disappear off the face of the earth and
reappear only in my imagination. Where do they really go, and what do they
really do there? I've never seen western grebes water skiing across a lake
in their mating ritual. I have no idea what kind of fish the horned grebes
catch for their young, or whether they feed them extra bugs. Do the babies
turn up their bills at bad-tasting food? I wish I knew.

Because we're a species that likes to think we're in control of our lives,
we used to toss a few first-born to Moloch so he would insure health,
wealth, good crops, and nice stuff for the rest of us. Kind of a "you
scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" social contract. In more modern
times, we like to toss a few million dollars to a different Moloch to
insure the same thing, only now we call the donees scientists or political
candidates or insurance companies.

Don't get me wrong. I actually *like* throwing money at scientists and, I
admit, even at politicians because some of our sacrifices actually do
work. Scientists discovered that DDT was destroying the eggs of raptors,
and politicians banned it to save the peregrines and eagles. Scientists
learned that a certain size of jack pine could save the Kirtland warbler,
and now reserves are set aside where the pines can be managed. If we are
smart enough and generous enough to make good habitat for birds, birds
will come.

But there is still so much that we don't know. Western grebes used to be
common at the Fill. I used to see a small flock of them hanging out every
winter at the mouth of the cut. But today's western grebe was the first
I've seen at the Fill in more than three years. What has happened to them?
I must assume that their population has plummeted, just as many other
species have. Exactly why is still as much a mystery to us as it would
have been to the ancients. Finding out what is happening to the grebes is
becoming an urgent challenge.

But to me the western grebe I saw today represents much more than just a
challenge to our science. Despite the fact that it was one when it should
have been many, that grebe represents the glorious, uplifted feeling I get
whenever I experience the wonders of nature.

In our pursuit of scientific knowledge and her technological handmaidens -
the cell phones, and the iPods, and the Blackberries, and all the other
accouterments of modern life - let us not forget that the appearance of
one stately western grebe fishing on Union Bay is as magical to us today
as it would have been thousands of years ago to our ancestors. We need
that sense of magic just as much as we need the hard science for us to
insure the grebes' survival.

Here's everything I saw at the Fill today and yesterday:
pied-billed grebe
western grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
green heron
Canada goose
wood duck
mallard
gadwall
American wigeon
northern shoveler
green-winged teal
ring-necked duck
ruddy duck
red-tailed hawk
Cooper's hawk
American coot
killdeer
long-billed dowitcher
Wilson's snipe
glaucous-winged gull
ring-billed gull
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird
belted kingfisher
downy woodpecker
northern flicker
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
bushtit
red-breasted nuthatch (heard)
Bewick's wren
marsh wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler
spotted towhee
song sparrow
Lincoln's sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
savannah sparrow
Western meadowlarks (two on Wednesday)
red-winged blackbird
American goldfinch
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com