Subject: [Tweeters] Montlake Fill LAZULI BUNTING
Date: May 28 19:17:33 2010
From: Jeffrey Bryant - jbryant_68 at yahoo.com


After FINALLY adding Black Swift to my Fill list (this took about 7 years, for some reason,) I thought the day couldn't get any better. I was wrong. As I approached East Point on the loop trail, I saw a dogwalker flush a smallish bird from the trailside. Fully expecting a Savannah Sparrow, I noted where it landed to get the binos on it. Lo and behold, a flashy male Lazuli Bunting appeared. It perched on the scraggly little apple tree near the western end of Boy Scout Pond for about two minutes, before flitting over to one of the small snags on the edge of the cattail marsh. Here, it cut a gorgeous pose with a male goldfinch and a bright House Finch before flying northwards over the tall cottonwoods that border the swamp.
The Black Swifts seemed to know there was no point in hiding from me anymore, and appeared to be everywhere, some so low they nearly brushed their bellies on the cattails of the southeast pond. Along with countless swallows and a few Vaux's Swifts, they put on quite the aerial acrobatics show. I picked carefully through them all for my last remaining Fill nemesis bird--Purple Martin--to no avail. Maybe another seven years.

Jeff Bryant
Seattle
jbryant_68 AT yahoo