After many months of missing Michael's weekly walk at Marymoor I finally made it today...only to realize that the walk is tomorrow. For some reason I thought he moved it up to Wednesday to avoid conflicting with Christmas Eve...Nevertheless, I had fun birding by myself and saw a few nice birds.



I arrived (too) early - at about 6:00 - and wandered around in the darkness in the East Meadow seeing nothing until about 7:15 when I saw one and posssibly two BARN OWL. Later, as I walked along the slough I had a PILEATED WOODPECKER flyover. FOX SPARROW were all over and I got great looks at one bird from about eight feet as it scratched in the leaves. At the end of the boardwalk I saw GREEN-WINGED TEAL, MALLARD, BUFFLEHEAD, COMMON GOLDENEYE, COMMON MERGANSER and about half dozen PIED BILLED GREBE. BALD EAGLES were perched in the usual spot by the dock. I saw a couple of RED-TAILED HAWK on the way back toward the East Meadow. When I arrived at the sparrow pile there were NO birds...because a COOPERS HAWK was sitting in the trees looking for breakfast. I watched the Coop for several minutes...creeping closer and closer until I was within about 15'. The bird finally flew which made the sparrows braver. I saw GOLDEN CROWNED, WHITE CROWNED, SONG, one LINCOLNS and yet another FOX SPARROW. While walking around the Manshion I saw both RUBY CROWNED and GOLDEN CROWNED KINGLET, BROWN CREEPER, CHESTNUT BACKED and BLACK CAPPED CHICKADEE, a HAIRY WOODPECKER and dozens of DARK-EYED JUNCO. 45 species for the park for the day.



My family and I just moved into a new house on West Lake Sammamish and I'm really enjoying starting up my new yard list. Although numbers range widely, I'm seeing good numbers and variety of ducks on the lake. During the weekend before last there was a huge influx including at least 300 NORTHERN PINTAIL, several hundred AMERICAN WIGEON, decent numbers of NORTHERN SHOVELER, GADWALL, MALLARD, BUFFLEHEAD, COMMON MERGANSER and COMMON GOLDENEYE. Today there were about 200 gulls, mostly MEW flying around in front of my house and the same species of duck except for the Northern Pintail. I also had a nice little flock of passerines in my yard including (in no particular order) RUBY CROWNED KINGLET, GOLDEN CROWNED KINGLET, TOWNSEND'S WARBLER, BLACK CAPPED CHICKADEE and CHESTNUT BACKED CHICKADEE. I also saw a BEWICK'S WREN and my first yard VARIED THRUSH. Just before sunset tonight I had a COMMON RAVEN flyby. So far my yard list is 45 but that's just one season. Is the Yard List contest still happening? Haven't seen posts on that for a while.



I'll be back at Marymoor tomorrow...but won't arrive quite as early.



Mason Flint

Bellevue, WA

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