Tweets -; A nice morning, mostly not too cold, mostly not raining, and mostly not too windy. There was a brief squall that did combine cold, rain, and wind, just to keep us believing it's still not really spring.

The record flooding continues. I'm failing to completely correlate official lake level data with what we've manually read from the lake gauge just above the weir, but it appears the lake high water occurred over the weekend. It rose at least one, and maybe as much as two feet above our Thursday survey, over the weekend. The lake level has dropped back some, but flooding in the park is much more extensive than last Thursday. This is definitely the biggest flood since 2007, and may have exceeded the January 1997 flood.

What this meant for us is that we couldn't get to much of the area we normally survey. The Off-leash Dog Area is split into two pieces; the slough trail is closed just south of Dog Central, and from the east side, you can't go south of the East Meadow. The boardwalk and trails to it are entirely flooded. The entire middle of the dog park is a large pond, and many other portions of the park are underwater too. Made for a very different walk.

Highlights:
a.. Cackling Goose -; maybe 1000 flew past; not many landed in the park
b.. American Wigeon -; 2-3 seen
c.. Ring-necked Pheasant -; the Pea Patch was underwater over the weekend; Lonesome George II apparently fled to higher ground; he was eating seed at the Park Office
d.. Virginia Rail -; at least 2 heard from east of the East Meadow, predawn
e.. HERRING GULL -; one in the pond on the grass soccer fields -; First of Year (FOY)
f.. Green Heron -; one at the Rowing Club -; first sighting in 4 weeks
g.. Barn Owl -; several sightings pre-dawn
h.. LONG-EARED OWL -; Matt got great looks at one at the south end of the East Meadow before 6 a.m.; FOY for us, but one was photographed in the East Meadow on 2020-01-20
i.. Pileated Woodpecker -; one landed near us at Dog Central
j.. COMMON RAVEN -; three flew over the East Meadow; FOY. This was our first raven sighting since December 2018, but there are several 2019 records on eBird, and one from 2020-01-20 as well
k.. Western Meadowlark -; flock of around 6; we thought we saw some fly to the East Meadow, and later found a very similar sized flock just north of Fields 7-8-9
We only had 8 species of waterfowl, with only Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye representing divers. I wonder if turbidity in the lake and river have driven most diving ducks elsewhere? Our only American Coots were in the interior "lake".

For the 3rd week already this year, we had ZERO FINCHES.

Misses for the day included Ring-necked Duck, Hooded Merganser, Common Merganser, Bushtit, Marsh Wren, House Finch, Purple Finch, and Lincoln's Sparrow

For the day 51 species.

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