Subject: [Tweeters] a pretty wet day in the neighbourhood - UBNA too
Date: Oct 2 17:26:04 2007
From: Brett Wolfe - m_lincolnii at yahoo.com


One of my professors called in sick today, so I had about 4 hours before the Field Ornithology class I TA at the UW. Decided that I needed another rainy day monitoring of the Union Bay Natural Area (UBNA) so walked on over there and spent the next hour-and-a-half utterly soaked!

I did however, see a number of good birds. First good bird was a Red-necked Grebe I could see swimming out in the deep water, making occasional dives. The coloration stood out nicely, even with all the nasty weather. Soon thereafter, I saw the Western Grebe that has been hanging out in the waters between UBNA and the Conibear Shellhouse, and this time, he had a couple of friends with him!

Probably the best bird of the day was seen in a conifer right next to the Shellhouse. There were a bunch of sparrows, so I pished the tree. I got the White-crowned and Song Sparrows I expected, plus a couple of Lincoln's Sparrows (there were dozens of Lincoln's Sparrows all over UBNA between 11:30am-1:00pm), and then a Chipping Sparrow! The nice rufous crown showed above an almost-nonexistent eye stripe. Good bird!

Finally, along the western side of the UBNA, I located at least 6 American Pipits that recently migrated in. Got some lovely looks at them as they wagged their butts up and down on the mudflats. I may have been soggy, but I sure had a good time!

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com

carenp <carenp at totalise.co.uk> wrote:
here in sammamishland, my forest has become even more raucous over the last hour, as a cooper's hawk perched itself about 20 metres up and 20 metres out from my porch... i'm not sure why i expected things to quiet down; it didn't, getting quite a bit noisier as the chickadees and jays put on a display of alarm-sounding, with the occasional jay even "thinking" about harrassing said hawk closely, then thinking better of that decision before getting too close...

while the hawk held sway over the south side, i was quickly buzzed by a hummer, which given the season was probably an anna's female... i say "probably," as it wasn't long ago i had a reasonable photo of a rufous female who hadn't received her 2007 migration memo; there wasn't enough light for today's photo to tell definitively...

to add to the fun and games, there was also a fly-over of geese (about 70-80, some of which looked like snow geese), and eight cranes of some variety (sandhills?) about 10 minutes earlier...

00 caren
http://www.parkgallery.org
george davis creek, north fork


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