Hey tweets, I get concerned when the old stand-bys at the Fill aren't
standing by. Lately, the ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD who has so doggedly stuck
out every kind of bad weather over the winter has been missing from the
Wedding Rock glade. The Urban Hort people aren't putting out feeders
anymore, and spring has been late. So I've been concerned about the
little guy. But yesterday, he was there on his favorite perch in the
serviceberry tree. Not happy, but present. He was hunched against the
cold wind, his back turned to me like a disgruntled trogon, reduced 10X
by a copier. I didn't care. I was too glad to see him. Then the sun
peeked out from under the blanket of clouds. Skies that had been bereft
of any birds at all miraculously filled with scores of VIOLET-GREEN
SWALLOWS swooping through the glade, chittering as they caught bugs
midair. They flew so closely above my head that I could see their beady
eyes glancing down at me as they passed. The hummingbird fluffed out
his feathers, turned, and flashed molten magenta, so bright I had to
squint. A bevy of BARN SWALLOWS joined the conga line that the swallows
had formed over the glade, and then the VAUX'S SWIFTS showed up, a bit
late but ready to party. My mouth opened in wonder, and I could only be
glad that the swallows and swifts and the hummingbird had been so
diligent about eating bugs because luckily I caught none.

You can always hear the whoosh of car traffic at the Fill, as cars
hurry across the bridge. Often, if you're over at the dime parking lot,
you can hear the metallic clink of bats hitting baseballs when the UW
baseball team is practicing. When there's a game, you can hear the
announcer over the loudspeaker. In the mornings and late afternoons,
the crew shells are out on the lake, getting bellowed at by coaches in
motorboats. The Fill is a constructed place, built by us humans. It
lies in the heart of a great city, also built by us. Nowadays, with our
cell phones and iPods and Blackberries and ever-expanding condos, it's
easy to think that constructed environments are natural. In a way, they
are, for humans. There is nothing we like better than to alter our
environment to suit our needs and our whims.

But the Fill is more than a monument to human waste and reclamation. It
is more than a park or a playground for humans. Somehow, over the
decades since the landfill was closed and capped with clay and covered
with a thin layer of dirt, the wild things took over. The Fill is
theirs now, if we let it be, if we give ourselves over to joining their
world and leaving behind our own, if we can tune out the car sounds and
all the other cacophony of civilization. If we can do that, then we can
hear the small chittering of the violet-green swallows overhead, as
they talk to each other and catch bugs, just as they have been doing
for millennia. We can send good wishes to the BUSHTITS down at the
point, busy weaving one of their ginormous nests in a tiny tree, as
they did last year. We can be startled by the pair of CINNAMON TEALS
that are bent on making new teals and that burst out of the cattails to
fly to another pond, the female leading the way, the male close behind.
We can wonder why on earth we were missing the KILLDEER, who have been
sparse for more than a year but are now back in force and who take it
upon themselves to warn all the other birds within a quarter mile that
you are coming near and you look dangerous so let's all fly away.
Yesterday, when they were alarming everyone, three LEAST SANDPIPERS and
a DUNLIN in full breeding plumage took heed and departed before I could
get a good look. Although I rolled my eyes in exasperation, it didn't
really matter. It was enough to know that the shorebirds are coming
through on migration now, as they have done for thousands of years. The
YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS are all decked out in their breeding plumage,
and they're about to depart for the north, as they have always done.
The swifts are back, and the hummingbird is still there. They live in a
different world, the wild world. We used to live there, too. We don't
anymore, but we can still visit. Yesterday at the Fill, I did. Here's
everything I saw:

pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
Canada goose
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern shoveler
cinnamon teal
wood duck (a pair perched in a tree!)
ring-necked duck
lesser scaup
bufflehead
common merganser
American coot
killdeer
dunlin
least sandpiper
ring-billed gull
glaucous-winged gull
bald eagle
ring-necked pheasant
rock pigeon
Vaux's swift
Anna's hummingbird
northern flicker
downy woodpecker
tree swallow
violet-green swallow
barn swallow
cliff swallow
NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW
Steller's jay
American crow
bushtit
black-capped chickadee
Bewick's wren
marsh wren
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler (both kinds)
COMMON YELLOWTHROAT
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
savannah sparrow
red-winged blackbird
BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD
American goldfinch
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com