Tweets ? it was overcast, but without precipitation this morning, and temps rose from 45 to 55 during the course of the morning, so conditions were certainly not unpleasant. It wasn?t terribly birdy, nor was it unusually quiet. I?m feeling like Spring really ought to be proceeding faster, but I always feel that way at this time of year; impatience on my part. Instead, we had a day with a more winter-season orientation, with good numbers of duck and gull species to pad our species total.

Highlights:

Wood Duck At least four in slough near lake, maybe 6 total
American Wigeon One below weir ? first since early February
Red-tailed Hawk One sitting atop odd-snag nest west of park entrance
Virginia Rail Kik-kadik songs from east of East Meadow
Western Gull One, early, with flock of ?Olympic? gulls
California Gull Growing numbers; 8-10
MOURNING DOVE 1 landed next to us near the concert venue ? FOY
Barn Owl Matt heard young, saw adult enter/leave windmill
Rufous Hummingbird First female seen
MERLIN EXTREMELY far off to the west
Northern Shrike Seen early from Viewing Mound
Purple Finch Seemed especially numerous and widespread today
Red Crossbill 38 in one flock. Flock(s) seen several times

At the heronry, many herons were sitting on nests, as if on eggs. While we again saw many BALD EAGLES, we didn?t observe as many occurrences of herons flushing from the nests as we did last week.

For the day, 64 species. Adding MOURNING DOVE, our year list is up to 87.

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