Dennis & Tweets:

Over the past few minutes, I have seen the very same thing with regard to
the flocks of Starlings. And the noise! My goodness, we haven't seen this in a
few years around our place. Yesterday, after mowing the lawn, I saw a sudden
rush of robins running around. After a quiet summer, I'm enjoying this.

Linda Davey
on Pine Lake
Sammamish, WA



In a message dated 9/29/2007 1:31:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
dennispaulson at comcast.net writes:

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_ (mailto:dennispaulson at comcast.net)






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