Hello, tweets.

I have been watching a rather unusual event on this stormy day. A
couple of hours ago, starlings started coming into the immediate
neighborhood in hordes. I've seen very few this summer, the fewest
ever in the yard and at the feeders, perhaps because the trees keep
growing up, and I think of starlings as open-country ground foragers.
But this morning, they descended in flocks on all the conifer trees
around here. Any time I looked out the window, I could see starlings
flying over and foraging among the branches of western red cedars,
Douglas-firs, and western hemlocks in and around the yard. They
crawled around on the branches and poked into the needles constantly,
more like parrots or crossbills than how I picture starlings
foraging. If I saw one bird doing that, I wouldn't think much of it,
but they were all doing it. The majority were young birds, still with
brown heads, but many were either adults or immatures that had
completed their prebasic molt. There were small numbers of robins
mixed in with the flights, but they weren't foraging in the conifers.

Is this something they just do at this time of year? I've never seen
anything like this. There are still some around, although the flocks
have mostly departed. They came from the south, and they returned to
the south, as far as I could tell. Were they coming from and
returning to a particular roost? Probably.

Another point of interest to me is that we have far more House
Finches in the yard than I have ever seen before, up to 1-2 dozen at
all times eating us out of house and home. I guess they had a very
good year in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, a mature male and a female or immature Western Tanager
came to the fountain in the past 10 minutes while I was looking out
at the starlings. It kills me to think of all the migrants that visit
there briefly when I'm not looking out!
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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