Subject: [Tweeters] Mountain Bluebird (?) at Alki Point (Seattle)
Date: Mar 15 14:11:13 2014
From: Gary Smith - gsmith at smithandstark.com


About noon today I watched a bird I'd swear was a female mountain bluebird
on the beach just south of the Alki Lighthouse. I'm reasonably familiar
with them, as they nest by a cabin in Idaho I frequent in summers, but
watching one busily flit around the kelp-covered beach rocks was an odd
sensation. So we appear to have another in the recent spate of West-side
sightings, this one situated similarly to the one at Semiahmoo.



This bird seemed to fall into the pale end of the spectrum - gray/tan above
and below, with the upper parts very slightly darker than those underneath;
the only obvious blue was in the tail and that was rather light blue, and a
hint of blue in the outer primaries. The tail had the customary charcoal
smudge at the tip and the outermost tail feather on each side was edged with
white. The white eye-ring and the subtle dark line that seems to connect
the eye to the bill seemed about

normal.



Hope some of you can also see it. At low tide it was foraging at the
northernmost stretch of the public beach called Constellation Park or
Ritchie Viewpoint, just south of or up to the first house to the north,
which is 3237 Alki Avenue SW.



--g



Gary T. Smith

Alki Point, Seattle