Tweets -; I was joined by two intrepid souls today, trudging through unceasing, steady, soaking rain all morning. It was decidedly dark and wet, though not overly cold (low 40's), and with only occasional bits of breeze. Needless to say, birds were often hard to come by. But we did have a few good birds.

Highlights:
a.. Wood Duck -; pair again in small pond at Rowing Club
b.. Lesser Scaup -; four males in slough
c.. Mew Gull -; dozens
d.. Ring-billed Gull -; at least 1
e.. Sharp-shinned Hawk -; one, probably male by size
f.. Cooper's Hawk -; at least two I think; we had ~5 sightings of accipiters
g.. MERLIN-; perched on tall conifers around mansion
h.. Bushtit -; ~10 along boardwalk, our first since early December
i.. Brown Creeper -; finally got a look, after thinking we heard some several times
j.. Cedar Waxwing -; flock of around 15 flew NW
We had some notable misses -; no finches at all, and a single NORTHERN FLICKER was our only woodpecker. Other misses included Ring-necked Duck, Common Merganser, Red-tailed Hawk, Lincoln's Sparrow, and White-crowned Sparrow. Did I mention it was wet?

Matt had car trouble and never made it to the park this morning; in his absence it's no surprise we had no owls. Of course, if he read the weather forecast, maybe he had "car trouble, uh huh, uh-huh"... Did I mention the unceasing rain? [Nah. He's willingly (stupidly???) intrepid when necessary, and I hope his car's health improves quickly.]

We had 9 species we didn't have last week (all of the highlight birds except Wood Duck), so our 47 species today brought our 2018 list to 61 species.

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