Tweets -; A bit of an understatement to say it was damp at the park today. Lake Sammamish is now at about 29.4 feet lake level. At 28 feet, we start to see notable flooding at the park. Anything over 29 feet is major flooding. Water levels were so high that we were unable to get even within view of either end of the boardwalk, and thus had no looks at the lake at all. We had to skip the whole south end of the park.

But there were plenty of "lakes", such as the flooding that filled the center portion of the Dog Area, and the large pond at the NE corner of the grass soccer fields. Lots of room for ducks, and they were spread thinly but widely. But few little birds, especially in the steady rain, despite the warm and windless conditions.

Highlights:
a.. Only 9 species of waterfowl! So not very good diversity, despite the huge amount of habitat
b.. Ring-necked Pheasant -; Lonesome George II lives on in the Pea Patch
c.. Accipiter sp. -; Brief look at one bird; maybe a male Cooper's Hawk?
d.. BROWN-HEADED BLACKBIRD -; near NE baseball fields -; First of Year
This is our first BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD for January, February, or the first half of March (and we've only had ten March sightings total). In Fall, we've only had four September, one November and one December sighting. So a very unusual sighting today. Possibly the bird was flooded out of whatever agricultural land it had been wintering on.

We did hear 9 species singing today, including BROWN CREEPER and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET.

Misses today included Ring-necked Duck, Hooded Merganser, Common Merganser, Virginia Rail, Northern Shrike, Marsh Wren, House Finch, and Purple Finch. WE HAD NO FINCHES. We also missed squirrel and bunny.

For the day, 46 species.

= Michael Hobbs
= www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
= BirdMarymoor at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20200206/466427bb/attachment.html>