Hello Tweeters,

On Sunday the 8th, four of us spent the day at Discovery Park in Seattle doing our 9th Big Sit. Kathy and Arn Slettebak, Ruth Mynar and myself spent 9 hours at the South Bluff which over looks the Sound, south meadow and some wooded areas.

We enjoyed a fantastic day in the park overlooking the meadow and the waters of Puget Sound. The morning started out fast with sightings of sparrows in the bushes and water birds on the water below us. We had a look at a Northern Shrike which are not unusual in the park during winter but this was the first sighting this fall. Good day for raptors. Peregrine Falcon, N Harrier, Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk and a lone Bald Eagle. A couple of flocks of woodland birds gave us time to look through them for warblers. Orange-crowned, Yellow-rumped and Black-throated Gray were mixed in with the chickadees and kinglets. We had really nice looks at a couple of Hermit and Varied Thrushes. For the day, we had 45 Steller's Jay moving south along the bluff in small groups. One group was larger. Almost 20 birds and the last jay in the group was a CA Scrub-Jay which are still relatively rare in the park. Late afternoon we found two Belted Kingfishers cruising around. 56 s!
pecies ties our high count for the Sit. We had a slight wind out of the north so we were hoping for some flocks of waterfowl or other migrants but nothing flew by. Discovery Park is the biggest and probably busiest park in Seattle. When you visit, you can see why. The park was full of people enjoying the weather. We were set up along the main trail and spent a lot of time explaining what we were doing. We got the "you're crazy look" but most people were interested and many couldn't believe we could see more than 50 species of birds sitting (standing mostly) in one spot. We enjoyed taking to the people and some were generous enough to make a donation. Rather than explain what the Big Sit is, I have included this link which explains it better than I can.


https://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/bwdsite/connect/bigsit/about.php


Neil Zimmerman

Brier, WA