[Tweeters] Marymoor Park (Redmond, King Co.) 2023-10-26

[birdmarymoor]

Tweets - Yesterday was one of our better days in recent weeks.  It was also our first frosty start of the fall, with a starting temperature of 32 degrees.  It slowly warmed to 48, though, under partly sunny skies, with no wind at all.  So quite pleasant, and a great reminder to have gloves, hats, hotties, etc., put back into the birding gear bag.  Birds are definitely changing over; we had 9 species of ducks for instance.

Highlights:
    Cackling Goose - A flock of hundreds landed near the concert venue.  More in flybys
    Ring-necked Duck - A late scan of the lake showed one male near the long dock.  First of Fall (FOF)
    Lesser Scaup - The late scan of the lake confirmed Lesser; we'd had 6 scaup sp. fly past earlier
    Bufflehead - About 15 seen from the Lake Platform (FOF)
    Hooded Merganser - Four at the Rowing Club pond.  Earlier had two probable flybys of four ducks each
    Western Screech-Owl - Heard one or two from the east end of the boardwalk (FOF)
    Northern Flicker - The first one we saw was eating Madrone berries off of a tree
    Merlin - Streaked past the Pea Patch heading south
    Varied Thrush - Nice look at a male near Dog Central
    American Pipit - At least one flew over the Viewing Mound at 7:45 a.m.
    Pine Siskin - Heard, and finally one seen.  I saw about 8 on Wednesday
    Townsend's Warbler - Several glimpsed at different locations.  At least three birds

We also had a probable GREAT HORNED OWL near the mansion, but our view was too brief to be 100% sure.  

I was also at Marymoor on Wednesday, and had RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER (first since August), two DOWNY WOODPECKER, and at least one ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, all in a fabulous mixed flock just south of the Dog Area.

Misses yesterday included Western Grebe, Virginia Rail, Short-billed Gull, California Gull (though there were many gulls in the pre-dawn fog), Red-tailed Hawk, Downy Woodpecker (but seen Wednesday), Northern Shrike (seen 15 of previous 29 years), Purple Finch (did they all transmogrify into Pine Siskin?), Savannah Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, and Western Meadowlark.

Yesterday, we had 59 species identified, with many ducks and gulls seen but not identified to species, and the probable Great Horned Owl.  With the additional 3 species Wednesday, that's 62+ in 24 hours.

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