Subject: [Tweeters] Strange warbler family in Seattle
Date: Wed Jul 8 15:37:39 PDT 2020
From: B Boekelheide - bboek at olympus.net

Hello, Dave, and Tweeters,

Thanks for your warbler story. It reminds me of an occurrence at the Farallon Islands many years ago. In the colony below our murre blind both Common Murres and Brandt's Cormorants nested right next to each other, with the murres just out of pecking distance of the cormorants. One time we watched a murre egg roll away from an incubating murre right into a nearby Brandt's Cormorant nest. The cormorant pair then incubated the murre egg along with their own eggs all the way until it hatched. After hatching, the cormorants tried to feed the murre chick their usual way, by opening their bills and expecting the chick to retrieve food out of their mouths. Unfortunately the little murre chick never figured it out and eventually died.

I suspect nature is full of mistakes like these, but we don't get a chance to witness them too often because they usually have bad endings.

Bob Boekelheide
Dungeness



> On Jul 7, 2020, at 10:31 AM, Dave Slager <dave.slager at gmail.com <mailto:dave.slager at gmail.com>> wrote:

>

> Tweeters,

>

> This morning I saw a real oddity at Carkeek Park in Seattle: An adult Wilson's Warbler feeding a fledgling Black-throated Gray Warbler. At first I thought my eyes must be making a mistake, but I watched 7 feeding events, so it was the real deal. The youngster did not appear to be a hybrid.

>

> I can think of a few ways this might have come about, but they all sound pretty far-fetched. I've never seen anything like this before. Has anyone out there in Tweeterdom seen something like this, or heard about an instance?

>

> In case anyone is interested in looking for it, it was right by the Honey Bucket in the middle of Carkeek Park, just below the water treatment facility.

>

> Dave Slager

> Seattle, WA

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20200708/8308b33e/attachment.html>