My plans to be at yesterday's Marymoor bird walk were curtailed when I
suddenly became nurse to a stressed and exhausted little brown bat on
Wednesday night, and spent Thursday morning tracking down a wildlife
centre to take it off my hands. So fuelled by reports that the sage
sparrow was still around close to sunset last night, I was determined to
find it this morning.

I arrived at Marymoor at 9, and spent 25 minutes on top of the dirt
mounds scanning around. Nothing doing. And I mean nothing - not a single
bird feeding nearby, not even robins or starlings. I set off to do the
usual loop in reverse, and that was also fairly quiet, with no warblers
for me and only goldfinch out of the finch family. The east meadow was
alive with delightful little savannah sparrows though. I flushed my
first green heron of the year just south of the dog area, and it flew
across to an exposed branch on the other side of the river, beautifully
placed for good visuals, but too backlight by sun for photos.

I met the Websters by the dog area, who told me they'd seen the sage
sparrow at 10.30 - I got back around to the mounds at 11.30, to be told
that a group of white-crowned sparrows had recently flown off, that may
have included the sage sparrow. I found four white-crowned sparrows
feeding around the back of the mounds, but no sage sparrow.

At 12.15, I returned to scanning from the top of the mounds for the
third time and finally got the sage sparrow - it was on the meadow side
of the mounds, feeding on the little gravelly hillocks at the foot of
the mounds. It flew into the very edge of the nearby brambles just as I
reached the top of the mounds and saw it, but still within view. I lost
it when it dropped down into the long reedy grass at the base of the
brambles, and I waited another fifteen minutes but it didn't show again.

I had it for probably a minute and a half out of a total hour and a half
spent at the mounds. Six sparrow species for the morning - maybe I could
have made it eight if I'd had time to visit the pea patch to look for
house and Lincoln's, but with so much time at the mounds, I had to skip
some of the usual tour.

Louise Rutter
Kirkland

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