Dennis and Tweets,

I just gave up working outside in the rain and came in the house.? We, too, have about 300 starlings, mostly immatures, working the evergreens.? There were a few non-starlings amongst the flock but I was too rushed to be able to watch their foraging behavior or determine what other birds were.? :-(?? I don't think we have had more than two starlings in the yard at one time all summer.? I'm not sure where they came from but they left to the north.? I hope they keep going!

Bruce Jones
Shoreline, WA
fremontinnATaolDOTcom







-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 1:31 pm
Subject: [Tweeters] starling invasion









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 numb!
ers 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







=








_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters






________________________________________________________________________
Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com