Hi Tweets

To start the New Year, today started out cool and rainy at Marymoor. The rain didn't last long, but it was solidly overcast all day and relatively quiet birdwise. The birds, with a few exceptions came in ones and twos, but we had a pretty good day overall.

The day started out with an early BARN OWL in the east meadow, continued with a good number of FOX SPARROWS, and lots of DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANTS flying toward Lake Sammamish. Approaching Dog Central we had a large flock of BUSHTITS and chickadees -- this mixed flock continued on with us for the next 45 minutes, but stuck to the tops of the large cottonwoods and refused to give us good views. We had a brief view of a nice drake WOOD DUCK along the river, and lots of BUFFLEHEAD both on the river and out at the lake.

Just after we turned the corner leaving the alder forest we had an unusual RING-NECKED PHEASANT cross the path - the first one in some time. Out at the soccer fields, we had a repeat performance by an AMERICAN KESTREL perching on the soccer goals. As we walked back to the cars we had a good flock with GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS, CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEES and a BROWN CREEPER.

We did have a 5 raptor day with BALD EAGLE, RED-TAILED HAWK, COOPER'S HAWK, and AMERICAN KESTREL in addition to the BARN OWL. A single CACKLING GOOSE was in with a small flock of CANADA GEESE.

Notable misses included: BELTED KINGFISHER, WHITE-CROWNED and LINCOLN'S SPARROWS and AMERICAN GOLDFINCH. Because most everything is melted, we had reduced numbers of ducks today (7 species as opposed to 10+ the last couple of weeks) - they had too many other places to hang out.

We finished up before the rain began again, and managed to see 46 species.

All in all, a pretty nice beginning to the year.

Brian H. Bell (subbing for Michael Hobbs)
Woodinville, WA
mail to bell asoc at isomedia dot com