A glorious first visit of the year to Magnuson Park?mostly clear skies and bouts of incredibly bright sun. At times it seemed we had to work to get the birds up, but 5 of us ended up with a good list. Some notables included:

Barn Owl - Sharon and Mark arrived early enough to see one return to the trees near Santos Place
Eurasian Wigeon - one male amidst the 100+ American Wigeon in the Sports Field
Scaup - about 2:1 Lesser: Greater but in much lower numbers than previous weeks
Hooded Merganser - the small Promontory Pond
California Quail - calling from Kite Hill
Common Loon - Pontiac Bay; pretty regular all winter
Horned Grebe - 2 birds off the swim beach; not very common this winter
Western Grebe - only 2 birds, way out in the lake; very low count compared to past weeks. Water birds seemed in low numbers everywhere, even scoping over to Matthews Beach and further north
Cooper?s Hawk - adult with blue band on left leg
Virginia Rail - squeaking from north edge of wetlands
Herring Gull - 3 on the swim platform
Yellow-rumped Warbler - just one or two of each sub-species, Promontory Point
Townsend?s Warbler - 2 on Promontory Point, 1 in central meadows; may have been more. All 3 were spending most of their time fly-catching

For the day, 57 species. Also on the trip, Brien and Fredianne.
Checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S16207269
Scott Ramos
Seattle