Dear Tweeters, Larry and Alex, thanks so very much for going to the trouble of tracking me down. I was at the Fill all morning and didn't want to ever come home. I have been in touch with King5 and I think we'll do something on Friday morning at the Fill.

It's good to know I am a member of such a *caring* community - and a good heads-up for knowing how futile it would be if I ever tried to hide out!

Thanks, too, to everyone who has signed Seattle Audubon's petition to bring shorebirds back to Montlake Fill. I read through the reasons people are giving for their support, and it is an amazing array of thoughts and feelings. I think every time in the future I start to get discouraged about how few people care about our planet's wild nature, I will haul out some of these posts and realize not only that there are many, many people who do care, but that they have a myriad of reasons.

If you haven't signed the petition yet, I humbly ask that you do so. And that you ask your friends and communities to do so as well.

On another note, the TREE SWALLOWS showed up today at the Fill! Two gorgeous birds with electric-blue backs, black masks, and spanking-white bellies soared and fluttered over Main Pond. They paid not the slightest attention to a SHARP-SHINNED HAWK in the neighborhood, nor did the raptor seek them out.

Once the hawk left the area, three DOWNY WOODPECKERS got into an enormous fight in the alder grove kitty-corner from the kiosk. More accurately, the two females got in a fight. The lone male just flew from branch to branch watching the show. I found myself humming, "you probably think this song is about you, you're so vain." It turns out that when Downies fight, the females make a singular kind of chittering noise. They also spread out their wings in a display I've never witnesses before, then they flatten their heads so much they don't even look like woodpeckers. Then they fly at each other, there is a whirl of motion too quick for the eye to see; the pair separate to their own corners, catch their breath, and repeat.

More than a dozen GREAT BLUE HERONS have assembled on top of Dempsey Gym (the gym at the southwest corner of the Fill, the building with the curved roof). They do this in February in preparation for their nesting season in the rookery around Drumheller Fountain. I heard the rookery didn't do very well last year, so it was good to see that the herons might be willing to try again this year. Not that I see them trying, exactly. They just gather on the roof and stand there motionless for a few hours, then slowly depart. Sessile courtship?

Here is a poem for you today:

O happy day
when the swallows return,
for they bring remembrance past
and promised future,
eternal spring driving out the winter.

- Connie, Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com <mailto:constancesidles at gmail.com>
www.constancypress.com <http://www.constancypress.com/>

> On Feb 17, 2015, at 1:27 PM, Alexandra MacKenzie <mizmak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just called her and she is on it. Thanks.
> Alex MacKenzie
> Seattle
>
> On 2/17/15, Larry Hubbell <ldhubbell at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Tweeters,
>>
>> If any of you have Connie Sidles phone number would you please call her and
>> tell her to check her email. Gary Chittim from King 5 would like to talk to
>> her today in regards to the shorebirds at Montlake Fill.
>>
>> Thank you!
>>
>> Larry Hubbell_______________________________________________
>> Tweeters mailing list
>> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
>> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>>
> _______________________________________________
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