[Tweeters] Marymoor Park (Redmond, King Co.) 2024-11-21

[Michael Hobbs via Tweeters]

Tweets - It was a very unusual day - the weather was quite nice with temps
in the 40s, no wind, no precipitation, and pretty good light, and we did
the bird survey as always.  But we spent at least as much attention on the
devastation that the bomb cyclone brought to the park; dozens of huge snags
and mature trees either snapped off or uprooted, large branches down
everywhere; downed twigs covering all of the ground.

Highlights:
     Trumpeter Swan - THIRTEEN in three groups flying south, silent.  They
did look very long necked
     Northern Shoveler - Two with a small flock of Mallards flying north -
First of Fall (FOF)
     Gadwall - A long line of ducks seen from the Lake Platform turned out
to be 53 Gadwall, ~10 American Wigeon, and 2 Green-winged Teal.  Probably a
High Count for Gadwall
     Cooper's Hawk - Nice adult flew across the slough, calling, then
perched for us to admire
     Four Woodpecker Day - Missing sapsucker.  Except for Northern Flicker
and one glimpse of a Downy, all woodpeckers were heard-only
     Merlin - Seen on the long dock during my late scan of the lake
     Northern Shrike - Juvenile seen a couple of times on the far side of
the slough; unusual spot for shrike
     Golden-crowned Kinglet - Continue to be especially numerous and
widespread and visible; Ruby-crowns also common, but 1/3 as many?
     Varied Thrush - Mason saw one near the mansion
     Pine Siskin - somewhere between 75 and 500, but probably 100 is a
rough estimate
     Townsend's Warbler - One NE of the mansion

Pre-dawn, it was strange to look out at Lake Sammamish and see virtually no
lights anywhere.  A couple of houses had generators, but the whole lake
seemed to be without power.

Two of the large trees supporting the heronry have blown down.  A few GREAT
BLUE HERONS were sitting (claiming?) nests in other trees, and one was in
the next-nearest best tree where I expect nests to be built in spring.

Pretty much every tall snag on the far side of the slough has come down,
including the ones that Purple Martins nested in for the last couple of
years.  The Big Cottonwood Forest lost many mature trees.  Both the Douglas
Fir grove NE of the mansion and the Aspen grove across Pea Patch Rd. had
several downed trees.  Clean up will take weeks.

Misses today included American Coot, Killdeer, Bushtit, and American
Goldfinch.

For the day, 59 species, including a Barn/Short-eared Owl seen by Eric
pre-dawn over at the model airplane field.

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