[birding] Sunset & Starker Parks

[Lisa Millbank]

A walk to Sunset and Starker Parks today was pretty good for birds, considering we were less than half a mile from home.  At Sunset Park there were a couple of WILSON'S SNIPES who were out in the open enough to get a good look from the boardwalk.  They were preening, eating, and even tucking their long bills into their back feathers to take a little nap, very cute .  At Starker Park some starling sentinels raised the alarm when a MERLIN dashed through the park and continued on.  At least 2 WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS, an adult and an immature, were at the community garden (to see pictures of the snipes and the sparrows, see http://groups.google.com/group/mid-valley-nature/browse_thread/thread/30bfd32752f2dc45).  4 COMMON RAVENS flew over doing some acrobatic flying and soaring, we don't see them all that often from our immediate neighborhood.  We thought we saw one of the Red-shouldered Hawks but didn't get a good enough look, and never heard any Red-shouldered sounds.  A MARSH WREN is hanging out with some BEWICK'S WRENS near the Old Mill Center school.  NORTHERN FLICKERS seemed to be playing around with one another, there must have been at least 5 of them.  If you like an easy WESTERN BLUEBIRD-watching spot, they are there almost every day, and are easy to approach.  A good variety of other birds were there today too, feeling perky in the nice weather.
At the duck pond, someone has probably dumped an unwanted Chinese Goose.  Sad to say, a lot of people abandon their waterfowl there.  In the last few years we have seen some kind of domesticated Greylag Goose breed, a Muscovy Duck, Indian Runner Ducks, Pekin Ducks, etc., some of whom have not survived very long, while others have managed to breed and produce some charmingly odd hybrids.  Mr. Chinese Goose is getting along with the motley domestic x Mallard hybrids, wild MALLARDS and AMERICAN WIGEONS in the pond.  He looks pretty cool with a big knob on his head and a weird-sounding honk, and I hope he does OK there at the duck pond.  Chinese Geese are descended from the wild Swan Goose of Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_goose
Lisa
www.neighborhood-naturalist.com
  

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