Subject: [Tweeters] Fill today: Kestrel!
Date: Apr 4 11:42:49 2011
From: Connie Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Hey tweets, I couldn't relocate the shrike reported at the Fill
yesterday, though I tried both yesterday evening and again this morning.

As compensation, I did find an AMERICAN KESTREL there this morning. As
Gene Hunn notes in the new edition of his book, "Birding in Seattle
and King County," (due out in late summer or early fall), American
Kestrels have become rather rare in the county in recent years.

This is certainly true at the Fill. I used to see them fairly
regularly in August, when the fall migration was going. There was a
kind of a platform built on a post on the northwest side of Main Pond.
The falcons used to like to perch there so they could look down on the
grassland and find grasshoppers and other small prey. This all went
away some 15 or 20 years ago. Since then, kestrels have been almost
impossible to find at the Fill. I did see one last summer (as did many
observers), but it was the first I'd seen in a decade or so. I have
*never* seen one before in the spring!

I found it with the help of a Northern Flicker, who flew across the
field and went to perch in the Triple Tree (the three-trunked
cottonwood standing alone in Hunn Meadow East). As the flicker flew
in, a falcon came bursting out, zoomed north across the field right in
front of me, and perched in a little tree just northeast of Main Pond.
There it sat for quite a long time before it flew off to the west. I
tried to relocate it but could not. I suspect it may stick around for
the rest of today, perhaps in Kern's Restoration Pond, where one was
seen last year.

Also present today:
? a ginormous flock of Violet-green Swallows (more than 200), with a
few Cliff Swallows and Trees mixed in
? numerous Lincoln's Sparrows in many brushy locations (I think we're
seeing migrants)
? 2 singing Fox Sparrows (one near the Wedding Rock, the other in
Kern's Restoration Pond)
? Savannah Sparrows already fighting over territory
? American Goldfinches turning gold
? 2 Red-tailed Hawks
? Red-breasted Nuthatch (Surber Grove). - Connie, Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com
www.constancypress.com
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