Subject: [Tweeters] Sightings in southern Snohomish
Date: Dec 2 17:46:13 2007
From: Lori Cox - fadetg at yahoo.com


Hello Tweeters,
Today was the first day we were able to spot Swans in person at Bob Heirman Park in Snohomish. We reviewed Rob Sandelin's notes, and it was much appreciated. Those of you in Western WA understand that today was a horrible day to try to be outside in the pelting cold rain. Well, we walked into the park just to see if there was anything of interest and we were not dissapointed.

We saw tons of birds hanging out in the area of the southern pond. There must have been hundreds of Mallards, as we have never seen this many in one place before. In and among them were the Coots looking just as happy. Loning it away from a Cormorant I saw what looked to be a larger Grebe-Clark's or Western. We saw a few more Cormorants before we headed back out, soaked and too wet to take any photographs.

What we could hear coming from the north is what we hoped would be our swan sighting, and sure enough it was. 13 what we believe were Trumpeter Swans overhead = in formation were 8, 1 lone one trying to catch up with them off to the west, and another 5 breaking from formation. They had lovely communications among them. Because of the snow yesterday and today, we lost sight of them with their beautiful white plumage against the dark raining sky when they reached the water. We also could not count how many more were greeting them as they landed, again their bodies "melted" into the camouflage of the snow. We saw a lone Cackling Goose preening on our way out, and we called it a day.

Happy sightings,

Lori & Shaun Cox
Birders in Redmond, WA


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