Hi all,
This is an invitation to everyone to e-bird from Cheasty Blvd and greenspace King-WA. It would be great to get regular information from that hotspot onto e-bird.
Cheasty has a really nice attribute. It's the only place I've ever been in in Seattle that makes me think I'm in South America. If you find the trail that starts in just to the south of the Park's dump-yard and then wind your way north you will be overlooking a very steep dropoff over the closest thing Cheasty has to a wetland. As you look north you won't see any Aracaries or Motmots, but otherwise it has a very southern feel. Maybe the droughts have accentuated this with all the snags inside the forest and the good work done by volunteers in a restoration-effort has created dead ivy that, stripped of foliage, looks like vines in the Amazon.
Delia and I birded there, Cheasty,--not the Amazon--yesterday and found 29 species, our ebird report is at:
https://ebird.org/hotspot/L2310008
We had noted an adult Coopers Hawk on a snag inside the forest. The indefatigable and amazing Ed Deal quickly emailed us with a congratulations and informed us of this bird's parental status, how many eggs were about to hatch where and when. It seems incomprehensible for me to imagine how much organized effort it must take to be in a position to know these things--here's a kudos to Ed Deal and his associates and their ongoing Cooper's Hawk investigations.
Another thing about Cheasty is it reminds me of the good old days when Dave Hutchison had the Flora and Fauna Bookstore in Pioneer Square. He didn't recollect this last time I talked to him but in the 80s he did Important-Bird-Area canvassing there and I remember him telling me how impressed he was with the birds, (at the time I didn't know where it was). He specifically mentioned Black-headed Grosbeak. Next time Dave has books at a WOS meeting, make sure to buy one, what an asset he's been over the years!
But yesterday Delia and I did not hear any sign of Black-headed Grosbeak, and I wonder if they are in a decline pattern, or hopefully we weren't listening very well. Hirundines are past the point of being in decline, we did not see any of what used to be regular foraging swallows overflying the Cheasty canopy. That's in keeping with what appears to this casual observer to be an almost complete Hirundine collapse in Seattle. But to my surprise a night earlier, Delia and I had been walking in Jefferson Park, a stone's throw from Cheasty, and there were good numbers of both Barn Swallows and Violet-greens flying grid patterns over the meadow in numbers that would have seemed completely normal in the 1970s--were we in some wonderful avian Twilight Zone? Or was it Swallow-Brigadoon? I was beside myself with joy, but now I'm afraid to go back there.
In one last comment it was good to see continued Olive-sided Flycatcher presence at Cheasty, and have a good density of Pacific-slope Flycatchers. (We've missed Wilson's Warblers the last two years).
Thanks to the Moderator for not cutting me off here,
Best wishes,
Ed Newbold
ednewbold1 at yahool.com Beacon Hill Seattle (a long way from Cheasty!)
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https://ebird.org/hotspot/L2310008
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