Tweeters:


For about two hours today I birded chiefly the northern half of Discovery Park, with Logan Derderian from Colorado. From the first flock of chickadees, it was clear the park was alive with migrant passerines. The best flock, surprisingly, was after we had split up at the end of the morning, I headed off to the south parking lot. Here a juv. SAY'S PHOEBE was working the bushes along the edge of a sizable migrant group that included two FOS (SOOTY) FOX SPARROWS. Another FOX was heard starting song at the central meadow. So like LINCOLN'S, this species is a tad early coming back this year. An imm. HOUSE WREN was near the south parking lot also. YELLOW WARBLERS seemed to be in every chickadee flock, sometimes alone, and at one point we had 6 in a single tight group near the start of the north beach trail; one bird here was as dirty-looking and brown as I've ever seen for a first-year. In this group, there was also a first-fall female NASHVILLE WARBLER. The three common warblers were YELLOW, ORANGE-CROWNED and BLACK-THROATED GRAY, and yet as good as the count for each was, we really only had time to count those in the north half of the park, and I had the one nice flock by the south parking lot. The full list of 57 species is on EBird.


Scott Atkinson

Lake Stevens

mail to: scottratkinson at hotmail.com