Hi Tweets

Michael Hobbs was out of town yesterday, so Matt Bartells and I got to substitute for him at Marymoor. It turned out to be a classic late December day - chilly to start (37F) and the temperature didn't rise much (39F). Followed by a light rain after about 20 minutes accompanied by a light breeze. It could only be called raw.

In spite of the weather we were joined by 10 other folks. The birds didn't seem to like the weather any better than we did, as they were very quiet most of the day. The river was up slightly since last week, so those who didn't have high boots had to walk around when we came to the boardwalk. We finally wound up with 49 species, but we certainly had to work for them.

Matt had two BARN OWLS near the Windmill early, and we had a couple of flyby WILSON'S SNIPEs over the East Meadow. Some fairly large flights of NORTHERN PINTAILs flew south toward Lake Sammamish early. As has been the case for several weeks we had large groups of MEW GULLs fly in from the lake just after dawn. Notable for being missing for the first time in 4 weeks was the very large group of CACKLING GEESE.

We had a nice flock of BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEEs, GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETs and some RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETs that followed our path. The sparrows were not very cooperative at the dirt piles, but we did pick up SONG SPARROW, GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW, and WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW. Earlier we had a large flock of mostly GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWs with a few WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS by the middle dog water access.

We ended the day with a nice adult COOPER'S HAWK perched right near the lot we park in, and while we were watching it a MERLIN blasted past (first suggested by all the starlings and robins in the soccer field taking off in panic).

All in all it was a good day.

Brian H. Bell
Woodinville WA
mail to bell asoc at isomedia dot com