Tweets ? I think I?ve seen this pattern before. No wind, falling barometer, two-day rain heading our way. Even though the morning was quite pleasant, it wasn?t very birdy at all. Not to say there weren?t highlights, but quite a few of our ?good? birds were only heard distantly, and it seemed we missed quite a few species without finding anything new to make up for them.

Highlights:

Wood Duck In all, 4+ males and a female
Virginia Rail 2-3 responded to claps from boardwalk
Barn Owl Matt had one before 5, model airplane field
All 5 common woodpeckers
Western Wood-Pewee One heard calling from boardwalk
Pac.-slope Flycatcher One heard singing in Big Cottonwood Forest
Warbling Vireo Pretty good numbers, but only 1-2 seen
American Pipit 1+ flew over Viewing Mound early
The 5 expected warbler species ? OC, Yellow, YR, Wilson?s, C. Yellowthroat
Western Tanager 1 barely heard calling from W. of slough
Black-headed Grosbeak Back in numbers
Bullock?s Oriole Female near heronry
Evening Grosbeak Heard flying overhead 2-3 times

I headed over to the cabana afterwards (CLIFF SWALLOW, our only BUFFLEHEAD ? 1 female), while Matt successfully checked for PURPLE MARTINS at the NE corner of the lake. But even with those additional sightings, we had just 62 species, which seems quite low for May 8.

Pacific-slope Flycatcher was new for the year, which brings our 2014 list to 226 I believe.

== Michael Hobbs
== www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== BirdMarymoor at frontier.com