Hello Tweets,

Today we spent 4 hours at the Nisqually NWR between 11am-3pm with a total of 72 species. We hiked and birded the entire outer "loop" trail,as conditions remained nice and calm during most of the hike with rain after 2pm. Good numbers of waterfowl are quite abundant with flooded area along the inner dike trail and open field for grazing and very good numbers of both Tree and Violet-green Swallows are quite numerous. It was a nice hike with just a few species of trees and bushes in bloom such as Indian Plum and Salmonberry,but otherwise much of the foliage remains leafless. We wish to include our most noteworthy species during our visit to the Nisqually NWR below:

1 Eared Grebe(an alternate plumaged bird observed in McAllister Creek)
2 Pelagic Cormorants(Nisqually Reach)
2 immature Snow Geese(observed with large numbers of Cackling Geese in fields north of the Twin Barns)
12 Wood Ducks
3 male Eurasian Wigeon
12 White-winged Scoters(observed at Nisqually Reach with 15+ Surf Scoters)
4 Hooded Mergansers
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
1 dark-morph "Harlan's" Red-tailed Hawk
1 Am.Kestrel
1 adult Peregrine Falcon
2 calling Virginia Rails
7 Greater Yellowlegs
3+ Western Sandpipers
1,500+ Dunlin
2 Herring Gulls
3 Western Gulls
2 male Rufous Hummingbirds
1 Red-breasted Sapsucker
4 Bushtits
5 Brown Creepers
1-2 immature Northern Shrikes
1 Lincoln's Sparrow


Good birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
Fircrest,WA
godwit513 at msn.com