Subject: [Tweeters] Fill today
Date: Oct 23 11:54:16 2013
From: Connie Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Hey tweets, the Western Grebe spotted by Mary Bond yesterday continues to forage at the Fill. Look for it around the crew house, in the Lagoon area. It seemed very happy today catching small fish. Last year, you may recall, a Western showed up in November and stayed for many weeks, often joined by one or two other Western Grebes. I wonder if this is the same bird. Western Grebes are notorious for declining to wear "Hello my name is?" tags, so it can be hard to recognize an individual, no matter how many times you see him/her. Or maybe it's just that *I* am notorious for not recognizing individuals, no matter how many times I see them. "Your brain's fusiform face area must be rather small," a neurobiologist friend of mine marveled one day.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I wondered. Still debating that one.

Also on view today, what I think might be a hybrid Eurasian-American Wigeon paddling around in the marina. It was a male with chestnut head but I thought I could also make out a darker swash of some other color (the day being too gray to tell exactly what color) flowing from behind each eye. Perhaps if this guy sticks around and molts into breeding plumage, things will become clearer.

In other reports, Darwin Alonso saw a Western Meadowlark yesterday. Nobody to my knowledge has been able to re-locate the Palm Warbler. And the fall colors keep turning more golden by the day, brightening the world so that it would be impossible to call the Fill drab. - Connie, Seattle

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