Over the weekend, two vignettes:

On Saturday in Lincoln Park (West Seattle), I watched a bushtit nest for a few moments to see if it might be an active one. A parent bushtit arrived to much acclaim from within, disappeared inside, then came back out and flew away. Just as I was getting ready to head on up the trail, another parent did the same. (I think it was a different parent because it looked a little darker and approached the hole from a slightly different angle, and these two alternated.) I started timing them for a few minutes -- every 90 seconds a parent came back and entered the nest. Wow! I wonder how long they could keep up that pace. No rest for the weary in bushtit-ville, it seems.

Then on Sunday I spent a little while at Green Lake, hoping to see baby pied-billed grebes. I checked most of the eastern lily-pad area and didn't see any nests and only one grebe -- though I'm hoping that perhaps further north there might be a nest I didn't get to. But on my way back, I noticed a female mallard among the lilies, which seemed unusual. I watched for a few moments and began to be concerned that she might be stuck, since she was obviously struggling her way through the thick lily pad area. Then I figured out why: she was trying to keep up with her two young, who were happily hopping their way ahead of her -- being so light, they had no problem walking on top of the pads while heavier mom kept getting tangled up in the stems! (Reminded me of young mothers in a shopping mall with toddlers....)

Trileigh Tucker
Seattle