Tweets ? the weather was MUCH nicer this week than last, which made for both
more pleasant birdwatching and more birds to watch. We did have a little
bit of light rain early on, fading quickly to drizzle, and then even that
stopped by about 9:30. It never got sunny, but there was no wind, and it
was warm (over 40 degrees all morning).

Highlights:

Wood Duck Male in slough, from RC dock
American Wigeon One in duck puddle on grass soccer fields
Northern Pintail Nice look at small flyby flock
Western Grebe Two out on lake
Virginia Rail Several heard east of N end of East Meadow
Wilson?s Snipe Heard, same place as rails, but pre-dawn
Barn Owl Three, between 7:00-7:15
Red-br. Sapsucker One NE of mansion
Hairy Woodpecker One, south end of East Meadow
BARN SWALLOW Still 3 over south end of East Meadow
RED CROSSBILL More than a dozen around mansion

We had 10 species of duck, total, but there were only a dozen CANADA GEESE,
and while I heard CACKLING GOOSE at one point, no more than 1 was seen.
There were about 1500 Cacklers at the park on Christmas day.

We found all of the chickadees-wrens-kinglets and nuthatch, creeper, and
bushtit, that we usually find - we don't always get that whole set of 10
species.

There was a COYOTE hunting the East Meadow at 7:00 a.m.

For the day, 55 species.

== Michael Hobbs
== www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== BirdMarymoor at frontier.com