There seem to be an inordinate number of Robins about these days. I saw scads of them on my bike ride yesterday, and a group foraged underneath the Douglas Fir outside Elly’s window during dinner last night. It is undoubtedly a migratory wave. Fall migration is in full swing, and reading the Tweeters posts every day makes me excited about getting out there to see it. I am trying to clear my calendar for a multi-day trip next week just to bird.
In the meantime I’ve been making forays down to Montlake Fill, about a mile from my house, an old landfill behind the University of Washington that is now one of the most important bird habitats in the city. In the main pond on Monday was a little flock of Least Sandpipers. I had read a Tweeters post of a Stilt Sandpiper, a bird I had not seen in some years. There is an unusual wave of them passing through the region right now—typically they migrate through the center of the continent. We ran into another birder there, who, after we moved on, waved us back from across the meadow. Next to the rediscovered Stilt was another nice bird, a Solitary Sandpiper.
There’s a new hummingbird at the feeder, a male Anna’s in mid molt and looking ratty. The resident hummers have left and the winter contigent won’t be in for another month, so this one is a migrant filling up at our tank. He’s been around for two days. A large flock of House Finches empties the feeders every day now—they’ve been around only for the past week or so. There is a wonderful sense of change in the air, and the birds are a great window into it.
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