Hello Tweeties,

yesterday's mystery bird is a juvenile Least Sandpiper, Calidris minutilla. Plenty of you identified this bird correctly, and several of you went into a fair amount of detail as to which characters supported your identification. this is a great educational experience for my readers, and for people who are new to birding, including some of your colleagues on this list! so thank you very much for taking the time to detail this for them!

here's today's mystery bird -- a real cutie, by the way -- is available for you to admire and identify, so feel free to take a look and to share with my readers how you came to your ID;

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/09/identify_this_bird_2.php

while i am on this topic, these images are kindly provided by the very talented Joseph Kennedy, whose primary goal for sharing his beautiful images is to educate the public and to help instill a love of birds and nature in all who see his photographs. i hope that i am helping him achieve this goal.

i also wanted to let you know that i will be making a brief visit to Seattle at the end of September, arriving noon on the 26th (fri) and departing at 10pm on the 29th (mon) to help promote ScienceBlogs (read more about this);

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/09/seattle_peeps_heres_your_milli.php

my plan is to meet my seattle "peeps" and as many tweets as wish to meet me, and to go birding at the montlake fill, which i typically birded daily for many years and which i have felt homesick for during my many years' absence. i also plan to photograph the fill for a photoessay i will write for my blog. if anyone would like to accompany me, i would be most pleased, so feel free to contact me off-list to make arrangements. on the other hand, if anyone would like to go to a party with me (sat, 27th), promoting SCIENCE (including birds and nature), you are all cordially invited to that too (info on the link provided).

cheers,

GrrlScientist
Devorah
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/
Roosting high up a tree somewhere in Central Park, NYC