Today I met 18 local birders at Bradley Lake where after a brief orientation we headed off to DeCoursey Park, starting there because Bradley Lake was frozen completely over with zero waterfowl present. At DeCoursey we started at the playground area where we got oriented to several species of waterfowl including Bufflehead, American Wigeon, Gadwall, Hooded Merganser, Mallard, Canada Goose, Lesser Scaup and Ring-billed Duck. New birders were surprised at the species diversity so close to town in a city park. We also had nice looks at the hyperkinetic Ruby-crowned kinglet along with Black-capped Chickadees and a Yellow-rumped warbler. As we rounded the back of the lake we saw an introduced/escapee Muscovy Duck looking far out of place at abut 32 degrees F. Jerry Broadus, TAS President and excellent birder, was along on the trip and very helpful, spotting a Cooper’s Hawk as it flashed across the lake. It continued to tease us until it was finally located perched across the street overlooking Clark’s Creek. After crossing the creek we managed to find two individual males of the species Dennis Paulson calls our “most common rare bird,” Eurasian Wigeon. This was very close to where Joe Schneider pointed out a “white heron” that we quickly identified as the locally uncommon Great Egret that has been a Pierce County target for local birders in late 2016 and into 2017. Further along the walk we found several Red-breasted Sapsuckers, on on a nicely drilled sapsucker tree, Bewick’s wrens, Pacific Wrens, Brown Creepers, Golden-crowned Kinglets and Chestnut-backed Chickadees.
From here we headed back to Bradley Lake, unfortunately still frozen over, where we ended the trip with sightings of a Bald Eagle just as we arrived and reversing the route of a flock of American Wigeon. Best bird of the fairly brief stop at Bradley Lake was what one participant called the “Halloween” bird, a perched Varied Thrush.
Thanks to all the participants, and to The News Tribune for their article promoting the trip.
Here is a list of the birds seen on the trip from our DeCoursey and Bradley Lake eBird lists:
On the last day of April 2016 I headed out on my annual Tahoma Audubon Society fundraising project the Birdathon with the help of 4 strong birders. Kay, Ken Brown, Laurel Parshall and Eric Dudley met me at the park-and-ride and we squeezed into my Subaru to head out. We started immediately with 4 species in the McDonald’s parking lot: American Crow, House Sparrow, Glaucous-winged gull and a singing White-crowned sparrow at 6 AM. This was the first of 17 e-bird lists I’d record today. You can still contribute by clicking here.
We had a lot of things going for us to accumulate a good list of species. Excellent birders, great weather, a long spring day of daylight, but against us was the calendar. I usually do this “big day” type of outing about May 7-12th. By then the neotropical migrants have arrived and small remnants of the winter visitors remain, maximizing the species available. This year, my first year in retirement, I’m just having too much fun traveling to pick a date in that time frame so April 30th was the best available date.
We started our day at Spanaway Marsh where the dawn chorus started with Chipping sparrow in the parking area, and had us finding 6 species of warblers including first-of-year county MacGilvery’s and Yellow warblers along with Black-throated gray, Wilson’s, Orange-crowned warblers and Common yellowthroat. We missed Hutton’s vireo where is “always” sings there and never recovered one all day. List at 39 as we headed for JBLM for 4 stops.
After talking with Bruce Labar about his day out on JBLM this week with the resident expert Nathaniel Swecker (Check out his web site on JBLM Birding) we made stops at both ends of Johnson Marsh and get some great birds including Hermit warbler, Cassin’s vireo, House wren, and Virginia Rail. Crossing the East Gate Road onto the Chamber’s lake area we saw a crazy number of Chipping sparrows, one Western Bluebird male was near the next box I get mine first sighting at each spring, we heard a Purple martin calling overhead, flushed one California quail, and headed across Hwy 507 about 10 AM to try for Western Meadowlark and Vesper sparrow, Yes on the WEME, no on the VESP.
About 10:30 we headed back toward’s Puyallup where we dropped Kay off at home, made a quick drive through of Wildwood park hoping for kinglets or woodpeckers (not today) and headed for the Lesser Goldfinch spot near the Sumner Riverside Disc Golf course. There we located Bruce Labar and his WOS group, but not the LEGO.
The 56th Street Stormwater Pond’s were kind, giving us our only shorebirds of the day, one lonely Lesser Sandpiper, a hard to see Wilson’s snipe lurking in the weeds, Killdeer, along with Cackling goose a Lesser Scaup, and a variety of ducks. We headed for Tacoma with our list at 72 species.
Our first stop was the Gog-li-hi-ti mitigated marsh where the winter gulls were gone, and we added no new species. At the Dick Gilmur turnout on Marine View Drive we did better. Our first salt water of the day added nice looks at 4 Marbled Murrelets in their breeding “marbled” plumage, not the black-and-white we more often see in winter, along with Brandt’s cormorant, Bonaparte’s gull, Belted kingfisher, and Pigeon Guillemot. At Brown’s point lighthouse we had an Osprey flying over the bay, spotted by Dr. Anthony Chen who joined us for the afternoon along with a first cycle Ring-billed gull spotted by who else but Ken Brown, our mentor and gull expert. Pied-billed grebe on nest at Mountain View Cemetery Marsh
We wound up the day with stops at the Mountain View Cemetery Marsh, Chamber’s Creek, Sunnyside Beach, and finished strong with 5 new species at Ft. Steilacom Park. On the bay we tried for expected easy birds like Surf Scoter and Common Loon without any luck, but at Ft Steilacom we added the expected Cliff swallows and lingering Ruddy Duck, but also had both Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers on trees on opposite sides of the trail. Both were males with the bright red head patch, and it was really cool to see the size difference.
A pair of bushtits closed the day, and we ended up with 92 species total. Side by side Greater and Lesser Scaup males at Ft. Steilacom
Thanks to all participants for a fine day, to all contributors for their support of Tahoma Audubon and their educational and conservation work. and to the leaders at TAS for the work of organizing this event.
You can still contribute to TAS by by clicking here.
Thanks.
Good birding
Ed Pullen
Here is the species list: The number below the species name is the number of eBird checklists the species was note at, and the number to the right of the species is the total number of individual birds of the species reported to eBird. Ignore the May 1-6 columns.
