Tweeters:

Just when we expect snow and the temperatures locally for November have been below average, I fielded a BARN SWALLOW report yesterday. Dallas Wylie (who owns the farm adjoining the Skagit WMA headquarters main parking lot by the entrance) called me yesterday to report he had at least one bird circling low around his place there off Wylie Rd. He described it well, including darker belly than other swallows and forked tail.

Today at lunchbreak I stopped in at American Legion Park in n. Everett. Birds of interest, at the little Arboretum area in the s.w. corner, included single Yellow-rumped and Townsend's Warblers and a Brown Creeper in a tight chickadee-kinglet flock, but better were two ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRDS on the edge of the parking area and visiting flowering shrubs at a residence adjoining. This species is tough to find in Everett, and on the CBC we almost always miss them: we had two last year on the Tulalip Reservation, but that was the first time in several years. Anyone out there want to help Dave Swain cover this and the rest of n. Everett (including the waterfront) this next Dec 15 (Sat) for the CBC? The port gives us good access and the longtime port employee, Al Eliott, can't go on the CBC this year.

A note on Townsend's Warblers this season: I don't know about others, but I seem to be running into birds a bit more often than usual for the late fall-early winter. Seems that any CB Chickadee-kinglet flock has one--I've run into birds in Lake Stevens, Everett, and Marysville here in the last month, without really trying.

On the Monk Parakeet issue I think Gene again has hit it on the head. The exotic psittacids, Red-whiskered Bulbul, and Eur. Collared-Dove at least for now don't seem to be displacing natives, given a preference for urban or cultivated sites. They can be pretty entertaining in their own right, and they seem to be an unavoidable part of our avifauna in these times. And given the existence of a number that have become well-established breeders, one wonders why the ABA doesn't include a number (beyond those now recognized) on the ABA list.

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
mail to: scottratkinson at hotmail.com
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