Tweets - a fantastic day at Marymoor, with a good group of people, and
decent weather, and birds. We did have high fog/overcast to start, but it
gradually cleared. We had good birding throughout,, with a fair amount of
singing and lots of newly returned winter birds (FOF=First sighting of Fall)

Highlights:

Gr. Wh.-fronted Goose 1 with Canadas like last week
MERLIN Mobbed by ELEVEN flickers
Peregrine Falcon Heading south high over mansion
Wilson's Snipe 1 on grass fields
BLACK SWIFT 1 over lake platform
Vaux's Swift 1 over lake platform
Pacific Wren Just S of dog area - FOF
Hermit Thrush Just S of dog area - FOF
AMERICAN PIPIT 5 in one flock, others - FOF
WH.-THROATED SPRW 1 near SODA barn - FOF
Brewer's Blackbird Diseased male begging for food - Year bird

Afterwards, I scanned the lake again, and picked out 2 RED-NECKED GREBE.
Then, a flock of about 30 CACKLING GEESE (FOF) were seen and heard flying
north into the park

For warblers, we were down to just YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER (Audubon's and one
Myrtle's) and a single COMMON YELLOWTHROAT.

Singing birds included lots of FOX SPARROW song, and a little bit of
RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET song, as well as 3 species of wren, plus Song Sparrow,
House Finch, and Purple Finch.

In addition to the 11 NORTHERN FLICKERS simultaneously mobbing (and being
strafed by) the MERLIN, we had quite a few other sightings of flicker around
the park. Hard to be sure I'm not double counting, but I'm pretty sure we
had at least 15, which would be a high count for the park.

This was only our second sighting of BLACK SWIFT later than mid-September.
We had 4 on October 7, 1999.

By a day, this was our earliest fall sighting of a WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.
Today's bird was a nice tan-stripe bird, calling loudly.

For the day, 66 species. Wow.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== http://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm
== birdmarymoor at frontier.com