Subject: [Tweeters] From the Fill
Date: Feb 13 13:14:49 2015
From: Connie Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Hey tweets, it was very birdy at the Fill today, as I suspect it was all over the region. Bugs have hatched out in big numbers, which has attracted large numbers of Yellow-rumps, Cedar Waxwings, and others to the feast. None of the birds I saw today were unusual, but everything I saw was beautiful, including two Northern Flickers who kept trailing each other and spreading their tails out with every turn. The sun shone through their red shafts like living fire. Wow.

A word to the birding community about the restoration project that is going on at the site of the Lone Pine Tree on the Loop Trail (the pine tree that burned in the last fire we had and is now a mere stub of itself). Professor Kern Ewing's restoration ecology students are busy in that area planting native grasses in an attempt to restore native prairie habitat to the Fill. The students have laid out stakes and string to mark their study plots, and somebody has cut the strings and uprooted some of the stakes.

Kern wonders if it might be a result of my and Seattle Audubon's recent attempts to get WSDOT, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the UW powers that be to change their mitigation plans for the site, plans that will effectively end shorebird migration at Montlake Fill.

As you know, Seattle Audubon has been circulating an e-petition to this effect (link to: http://tinyurl.com/WaSDoT-Shorebird-Petition <http://tinyurl.com/WaSDoT-Shorebird-Petition>)

It's possible that some of us fans of the Fill might have become overly partisan and enthusiastic in our efforts to help the birds. (And no, I'm not one of them, though I have felt the temptation to take direct action.)

While it's true that some of the stakes near Main Pond have been installed by WSDOT, in preparation for their fell deeds, most of the stakes in the area are the students' work. Kern asked me to ask the birding community to keep an eye out for the kids' work. He said he'll be posting some signage explaining the students' project soon.

Thanks for any help you can give, both to the students and to our attempt to get WSDOT to listen.

Here is a poem for you today about our early spring:

Real gamblers don't play poker.
They grow at the Fill,
betting all their flower children on an early spring.
Very risky, little trees.


- Connie, Seattle


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