Subject: [Tweeters] Wow--16 Varied Thrushes all at once in our yard
Date: Dec 3 11:18:48 2007
From: Bruce Moorhead - bruceb at olypen.com


The weather in the Olympic Mountains has definitely just changed. For I just looked out the window by my computer here in the northern foothills of the Olympics, and was startled to find 16 Varied Thrushes festooning the upper canopy of our Japanese maple tree. In all my years birding hereabouts, I've never seen that many in one place at one time; the norm being 1, 2 or 3, and maybe 4-6 after a good snowfall, but never that many--and there may even have been more I think in this group, the way these birds were flying off soon out of sight around our house (toward others?), and two minutes later are all gone and out of sight. Anyway, we x-c skiied up on Hurricane Ridge this past Friday when the first new snow (12 inches) had just come in up there, and there's been a lot more up there on through the weekend. So I have to wonder if these birds were moving down altitudinally (i.e., to the north ahead of the storm) or latitudinally and south from Canada. It could be either way really, but perhaps the former, I suspect is more likely, the way this storm has just moved through here from basically SW to NE, as they quite often do from now on. Five minutes later, 4 are now back in the tree, so perhaps I can get a better count. Always lovely, orange-breasted, albeit unpredictably observed, birds whenever they errantly happen to appear, but 16 was not what I've ever seen before. Ah well, it does brighten a rainy wet, gray day out here.


Bruce Moorhead
Port Angeles, WA
bruceb at olypen.com