Subject: [Tweeters] passerines mob pond area in front yard: poor air quality related?
Date: Mon Sep 14 20:39:15 PDT 2020
From: Scott Atkinson - scottratkinson at hotmail.com

Tweeters:

We have a pond in the middle of a circular-drive "island" in our front yard in n. Lake Stevens. It has been a frequently-visited spot during the hotter months, as songbirds come to bathe and drink. Today, however, we had an unprecedented "mobbing" of about 75 birds, mostly Pine Siskins, landing at the pond's edges, and in the adjacent shrubs, in what appeared to be animated and stressed behavior. Given lower-than-average daytime highs over the last few days, this observer had to consider the unusually bad air quality of recent days as a possible cause.

Other birds present at the same time (!) and in very close quarters included migrant Warbling Vireos, several warblers, Swainson's Thrush, juncos, and more, landing in the open rocks above the pond or in two main shrubs, a Red-Osier Dogwood and a Pacific Flowering Dogwood, at each end of the pond respectively. Given a very confined area (the pond is only about 12' x 6') and very few landing spots along the pond's edges, the bird concentration was quite attention-grabbing. Noting a similar Tweeters report today, seems that the drinking and bathing would have greater benefit in these extreme conditions...

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20200915/824a71d2/attachment.html>