Saturday March 24, 2012

Woke up with lots of bird songs outside. What would we find today? Looking out and seeing for the first time this year a beautiful evening grosbeak (#74).

Evening Grosbeaks

Oh yeah, it starts with one but then go away for a few minutes and look again and a whole flock of them are sitting on the feeder singing away in a raucous chirping concerto. We had bunches of birds today but there was another bird we didn't know off-hand. Looking closer we saw it was a white-throated sparrow (#75). I'd never seen one of these ever so it was nice to add him to the count.

We decided to go out in search of wood ducks today. There had been a report of a couple in Deep Lake at Nolte State Park--not far from where we live. So we headed out there. First it was closed for the winter--really? Well we did like everyone else and parked on the road and walked in. There is a trail that appears to go around Deep Lake but it's a small lake and we could see most of it from a floating platform--no ducks. Disappointing. Oh well, let's go to Federal Way to the Weyerhaeuser campus pond. There were some hopeful reports from there. It's also a small lake with a trail around it. Even though it's right next to I-5 it has a wide assortment of waterfowl and we did find two new ones. First, the comical ruddy duck (#76) and then the classic beauty  redhead (#77) and then a lesser scaup (#78) but no wood duck.

Redhead

So over to West Hylebos Wetlands. We hiked the trail but hardly any bird activity. I think I saw a Huttton's vireo but it was a bit of a quick peak so I'm not going to confirm that. So no wood duck but it was still a nice day--we added five--that's a good day at this point.