Hey tweets, I'm going to have to get out more. Yesterday, my husband and I toted our son and his kayak up to Marblemount to help launch him on a 4-day paddle down the Skagit. It's the first time I've been birding out of King County in years. We found a pocket of activity at Marblemount such as I have never seen before, not even in Texas or Florida (and I experienced a fallout in Florida). It was stunning, yea even biblical: hundreds of warblers, vireos, and flycatchers were working a short stretch of habitat along the river.

We saw: MacGillivray's Warblers in the plural, herds of Black-throated Grays, quantities of Yellow (both adult and immature), Orange-crowned, and Common Yellowthroats. There were also Yellow-rumped Warblers (all Audubon), and one in juvenal plumage (held for a very short time when first out of the nest). We saw more Red-eyed Vireos than we could count, and most were foraging at eye level, an experience unique in my life - usually the Red-eyeds that I see (if I can see them at all) are at the tops of tall trees so high that you have to bend your head almost completely backward, like a cat who's about to be given a pill by the vet. Flycatchers abounded, although the only ones we could identify for sure were Pacific Slopes. Also plenty of Vaux's Swifts, Violet-green and Barn Swallows, a few Western Tanagers, and a kettle of Turkey Vultures, not to mention my best view of a Swainson's Thrush ever, a bird that was somehow "whiting" characteristically while at the same time holding a big, fat worm in its bill, an impressive act of talking without moving your lips. I think it was out in the open waiting for us to look away before diving down to its hidden nest.

- Connie, Seattle

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