Hi Tweets,

Well another Birdathon is wrapped up today. With each ring I add to my trunk I get a
bit less ambitious in my Birdathon's scope. This year Marissa Benavente, Penny Rose
and I decided that we would follow up last year's Seattle-wide Birdathon with a
smaller-scale, West Seattle only attempt. In defining our area we considered West Seattle
to be the area south to the city limits at White Center and east to the Duwamish.

We started at 6 AM and quit around 6:40 PM. We ended up with 86 species
including a few nice surprises. Our biggest dips were probably D.C. Cormorant
and Purple Martin. How we missed the Double-crest while seeing a Pelagic and
several Brandt's Cormorants I don't know. The highlight of course was the GRAY
FLYCATCHER at Lincoln Park. Thanks to Gene Hunn and Brian Meiuller for following
up so quickly and corroborating our sighting so it didn't end up in the questionable
"birdathon fever" category. Other good birds included a TURKEY VULTURE over
Camp Long, as well as BARRED OWL there; a lingering LINCOLN'S SPARROW
at Roxhill bog, five species of flycatchers, three vireos and five warblers. There was
a MARBLED MURRELET just east of the Alki lighthouse, a RHINO AUKLET way
offshore at Constellation Park (Alki), two Harlequins at Lowman Beach (north of
Lincoln Park) and a ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW at the Duwamish.

As many others have noted recently there are large numbers of WESTERN TANAGERS
around. In the very unlikely spot of a tidal wetland near the Hwy 599/Hwy 99 junction
just south of the First Ave. bridge we saw at least 12-15 in a very small area. Also
here, we had our only CLIFF SWALLOWS of the day.

Perhaps a more ambitious team could have approached 100 species but we all
know how hard the last few species are to find and we ended the day happy with
86 - cormorant and martin dips not withstanding.

Thanks a lot to Maryanne Thorbeck for doing the actual hard work of fundraising
for us. We've become spoiled in that our happy task has been limited to that of
finding and ID'ing the birds. In the end, the money for bird conservation is what
the Birdathon is really all about.

good birding!

--
Jim Flynn
merlinmania at comcast.net
Seattle, WA