Bird Watching Union Bay Natural Area April 24

Transcribed from April 24 notes.
Time 630-830am

Our natural history group met in the wetland environment of the Union bay natural area on UW campus, that was adjacent to lake washington; it is a freshwater wetland system dominated by grasses, swamps, stands of deciduous trees, and the lake shore.

comprehensive bird list below, some of the more interesting/rarer birds require more talk. The yellow rumped warbler we identified by site when we were looking for the source of a call belonging to the unidentified bird in the species list below. The yellow rumped warbler was of a very dark bluish color with a faint whitish pattern on its body, but had a very recognizeable small but bright yellow patch square under his chin, and two white circular spots on the underside of his tail, one on each of two apparent tail feathers which were otherwise dark. Very exciting to see this bird, its presence was fleeting, but he liked climbing around on the bigger limbs of a nearby deciduous tree very close to the shore of the lake. The unidentified call that led us to the warbler was very loud and recognizeable as two distinct pitches, usually a high followed by a low, sometimes a followed by a repetitio of the higher pitch again. The pitches were formed by pleasent trills that lasted about 1/2 to 3/4 of a second each, much longer than a cheap. The bird itself was about the size of a flicker, and it had a long orange beak that was not downward curving, and a clear reddish brown breast that was split like two chicken breasts at the bottom where it turned white and having dark spots on that white region where the underside of its tail was. Its head was dark.
The American goldfinch was extremely easy to identify because it landed in a bush only a few yards from us where a spotted towhee and a chickadee were already presiding. The goldfinch was very bright yellow/gold with a bright orange beak and a very recognizeable black face mask and black ends of its wings. Its call was not exactly what I had heard from what I thought to be a goldfinch in carnation on April 7 (see journal), but it was close enough to that spirally call that I did not dismiss my previous identification, in fact it strengthened it a little bit in my opinion.

Bird species list:
black capped chickadee
virginia rail
great blue heron
red winged blackbird
yellow rumped warbler
kinglet
American robin
hummingbird
spotted towhee
American goldfinch
common crow
mallard duck
northern shoveller duck
cinnamon teal duck
unidentified bird (described above)

Posted on May 1, 2012 07:55 PM by robertmarsh