It's my favorite time of the year in the back yard! This week we've had a male BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK at our feeder, twice; a pair of ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLERS, a flock of YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS (up to 8 or 10 or so at a time), and my favorite, the yearly WILSON'S WARBLER making his cute way through the cherry tree. There may have been a flycatcher in a nearby snag, but by the time I got my binos out it was gone. Yesterday a mixed flock of VAUX'S SWIFT and Northern Violet Green Swallows was flying around the neighborhood for a few hours in late afternoon. There were at least 50 birds at some points, and probably about a third of what I was seeing was swifts (and not swallows doing their swifty display). I wonder if some insect had a hatch-out.

Still waiting to actually see one, but I heard the tli-deet! call of a WESTERN TANAGER Wednesday. My husband works in an office park next to Yancy Park and the steel plant in West Seattle, and a male WESTERN TANAGER turned up in a little office-park tree outside his window Friday. This is one of the species in mind when I consider who specifically benefits from the Waldo Woods conifer grove at 15th NE and NE 85th, which is slated to be mostly cut down.

In years past we've sat outside and ate dinner in the warm sun day after day to watch the migrants come through, so it's a bit strange to have this happening while it still feels like March outside.


Alyssa Sampson
Maple Leaf
Seattle
alyssasampson at comcast.net