Hey tweets, yesterday a soggy group of Mountaineers' naturalists slogged their way through the Fill with me, trying to let our smiles be our umbrellas. Many of the songbirds had more sense and hunkered down under cover, although there were some notable exceptions:

? some singing Ruby-crowned Kinglets in Yesler Swamp, whose rollicking music stopped us in our tracks;
? Brewer?s blackbirds back this spring to investigate the bushes around the helipad, the only place I know in the city where they breed;
? a horde of swallows skimming the waters near the crewhouse. Most of the swallows were Violet-greens - something like a hundred or more. At one point, one flew low enough for me to see its violet as well as its kelly green, one of my favorite sights in nature.

We came home wet and happy.

Here is a poem for you for St. Patrick?s day:
There is no green

like the green

of a Violet-green Swallow.

Vibrant, glowing,

here one instant, gone the next,

flown away on the wild wind. - Connie, Seattle



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