Subject: [Tweeters] From the Fill
Date: Oct 25 19:46:10 2015
From: Connie Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Hey tweets, The Fill provided a little bit of almost every kind of fall weather today: rain, sun, balmy temperatures, chilly breezes, thunderstorms threatening. It was glorious to watch the changing light bathing the trees, with their upper leaves changed to gold as though some giant hand had dumped a pot of gilding over them.

As far as I know, no one saw the Sandhill Crane today. The last views were yesterday. If anyone out there in Tweeterland knows the last sighting, I'd like to put it into my records. This is only the fifth sighting of a Sandhill Crane at the Fill in more than 100 years, and this bird was the only one ever to have landed and foraged. The others were all flyovers.

People were asking if this crane might be the same one spotted in Edmonds a day or so earlier. "Our" crane had a wound on its left cheek. Could anyone in Edmonds see that?

Although the crane did not put in an appearance, a highly extroverted American Bittern made up for it, preening and eating frogs on the Lagoon before floating off to Canoe Island near the crewhouse. This bird seems uncharacteristically tolerant of people, almost (one could say) the Jerry Lewis of bitterns.

Also on view today: A Merlin flying over several times (I believe we might be its territory); a Wilson's Snipe changing ponds by flying high overhead; a late Savannah Sparrow on Main Pond; and a poor Red-tailed Hawk being harassed by more than 50 crows, who didn't give the hawk a moment's peace.

Here is a poem for you today, in honor of our lovely Sandhill Crane:

Bustles have gone out of fashion

for all but the Sandhill Cranes

who still need them to dance through life,

elegant even when eating beetles.


- Connie, Seattle

constancsidles at gmail.com <mailto:constancsidles at gmail.com>
www.constancypress.com