Subject: [Tweeters] Montlake Fill birds this morning,
Date: Nov 4 11:55:04 2009
From: Evan Houston - evanghouston at yahoo.com


Hi Tweeters,

Bird variety was good this morning at the Montlake Fill.

Among the waterfowl, there was a female Redhead (among Ring-necked Ducks off SE point), 2 Ruddy Ducks way out on the lake, 9+ Hooded Mergansers on the main pond, Wood Ducks, and a Western Grebe.

Songbirds included 2 Western Meadowlarks, a flyover American Pipit, a Winter Wren (a less common, winter only bird for the Fill), Brown Creeper, and Golden-crowned Kinglets in with a large group of Bushtits and Ruby-crowned Kinglets.

Th top highlight was observing the continuing juvenile Northern Shrike. The best part of this observation was evidence that the bird is planning on sticking around for a while, because an avian prey item was prominently impaled on a bare tree (this tree is along the edge of the lake off the loop trail about equidistant from the main and SW ponds). If anyone goes to the Fill soon, I would be interested in your thoughts about what bird this was. It may be a Red-winged Blackbird, but one ID problem was that the head was entirely gone. The rest of the body was intact and seemed all dark and I didn't see any epaulets, so maybe it was a Brewer's Blackbird.

Good birding,
Evan Houston
Seattle, WA