An artist I met once at the Wooden Boat Festival told me it never rains when you can see the Dutchman’s breeches. She had set up her easel out in the open on an overcast day that looked as if the heavens could open at any moment, although there were patches of blue here and there (hence, the breeches). Now, usually I am gullibility itself. I tend to believe what anyone tells me until I find out different for myself. But even I thought she was loony. Why should one cloud pay attention to the lack of cloud in another part of the sky and hold off dropping its buckets of rain? Nevertheless, when I spotted a tiny patch of blue yesterday afternoon, I was off like a shot to the Fill. I’ve been working on my unbridled optimism lately, and maybe that artist was right after all.

Unfortunately, no sooner did my husband drop me off and head over to the Mac store with the car than the heavens opened and the rain came down. Not to worry, though, because I think I must know every tree on the site that is worth huddling under in a storm. In this case, my tree was behind the baseball diamond, where a little service road goes up to a sawdust pile and ends at the back of a polluted slough. You wouldn’t think this would be a good area to be forced to sit in while hoping the rain would end. But it was utterly charming.

First, three American Goldfinches showed up to take a bath in a nearby puddle. Why bathe when it’s raining? Beats me. The male went first, wading in until his stomach was underwater, then splashing decorously with his wings. One of the females was more exuberant, motoring around in the puddle like a rubber ducky with an outboard. The third female had just entered the puddle when I had to cough. Blam! My cough blasted her straight out of the water and onto the shore as she checked to see what had just exploded.

Meanwhile, a Black-headed Grosbeak alit in a nearby tree and posed for a few seconds. A Downy Woodpecker began to ratchet along a branch, and a family of Bewick’s Wrens began agitating for their parents to get busy and feed them now now now.

Female Downy Woodpecker ratcheting up a tree.

Near my tree, a female Common Yellowthroat showed up. I thought she was there to huddle from the rain as I was, but no, she was a lot more interested in catching the myriads of insects that all this rain has fostered. We must be grateful to the mosquitoes, for they nourish the birds. As I nourish the mosquitoes. Hakuna Matata!

Alex in Micronesia, 2002

Long-time Seattle birder (and my son!) Alex has been up to good lately. Birders may recall that Alex spent three years teaching in Micronesia. While there, he experienced a typhoon that destroyed all the breadfruit on two of the outer islands. Alex asked the birding community (and others in Seattle) to help him save the lives of 400 people. Which we did!

I guess helping others grew in his heart because for some years now, he has been on the board of a nonprofit called Habele. (He actually helped to found it.) Habele is an organization that provides scholarships for Outer Island Micronesian high school kids to attend boarding school on the main island.

Boarding school is the only way that Outer Islander teens can get a decent education, and a chance upward in life.

For $500, Habele can provide a year’s worth of tuition, room, and board for one student. Last year, Habele funded 16 kids.

This coming year, Habele needs to keep those kids in school and perhaps send a few more too.

You can help! Imagine the good you can do with a small donation to change a Micronesian kid’s life.

Check out the Habele web site. It’s an IRS-recognized charity. One hundred percent of your donation will go to help the kids – Habele is totally run by volunteers.

Please go to: www.habele.org and dig deep into your pockets. Your money can change lives.

June is the month to raise your eyes to the heavens and search for one for the rarest and most beautiful birds of the Fill: Black Swifts.

I do not see them every year. But when they come, the Black Swifts appear out of nowhere, conjured by Mother Nature as a special gift to the Fill. One second the skies are empty, the next they are crowded with black, swooping birds. They knife through the wind but make no sound, like aerial scimitars brandished high above the landscape.

Black Swifts are one of the latest migrants to arrive from the south. This year, they reached the Fill on May 27, when 24 soared overhead in the most wondrous show I have ever seen. For almost an hour they swirled – first over the fields, then over the alder grove, out to the lake, and back again. As they passed by each other, now and then two would engage briefly in flight. A mated pair? I think so, for Black Swifts live on the wing, mate in flight, hunt together in flight.

For the past week, half a dozen have come in the early morning hours to draw fractal patterns among the clouds like the brushstrokes of a celestial sumie calligrapher, whose ink paints an avian phrase against one cloud, then fades to memory, only to write another phrase in the next cloud. What is being written? We are not privileged to know.

Black Swifts are birds of mystery, rumored to build their nests behind mountain waterfalls in the Cascades and on the sheer faces of cliffs where the moss grows strong. No one knows exactly where the nests are, or if people do, they keep the secret. As do the swifts. It’s black magic.

The Killdeer was at it again in the Dime Lot yesterday – spreading out her tail and dragging herself pathetically along the gravel as though at least one wing and probably lots of other appendages were broken and useless. She looked like she was about to expire and provide me with a tasty meal of Killdeer Tartare.

It was all a scam, for as soon as she thought I was far enough away from her babies, she spread her perfectly healthy wings and tail and flew off, leaving behind only her shrill cries to mock my gullibility. She didn’t go far, though – only to the south end of the parking lot, where three miniature versions of herself popped out of the grass and began to hunt for insects. They were so tiny but had such long legs they looked like Killdeers on stilts. They were inexpressibly cute.

The Killdeers as a whole have done remarkably well this year. One pair hatched out a batch of babies at East Point and seem to be working on another batch in the field nearby. But it is along Douglas Road, leading into the Dime Lot (or E-5), that the Killdeers have really flourished. I saw at least two nests earlier in the year, scratched out in the gravel that slops from the road into the grassy verge. I think the locations were ideal. The grass hid the nests from the view of the crows, who prey on both eggs and babies, and when the chicks were ready to roll, they had convenient amounts of insects supplied by the proximity of the marshes that line the east side of the road.

The Fill is beautiful and healthy-looking right now, with the tall grasses flowing in the breeze and birds swirling in the sky. But it is breeding success that for me really defines the health of an ecosystem. By that measure, the Fill is bursting with life.

Spotted Sandpipers like to have their cake and eat it, too. Not that they really eat cake, of course. On the contrary, like other sandpipers, spotties prefer a diet rich in worms, small crustaceans, and insects. But I’m not talking about their diet here; I’m talking about their breeding plumage. On their undersides Spotted Sandpipers dress to kill, while on their upper reaches they dress to conceal. In other words, they stand out and blend in at the same time.

Spotted Sandpipers, you see, are plain brown above. This makes it easy for them to “disappear” whenever a predator comes by. They simply crouch and freeze. Their plain brown feathers perfectly match the brown mud upon which they feed, and they become almost impossible to spot. I’ve seen even a sharp-eyed Merlin fly right by a Spotted Sandpiper on an open mudflat without knowing one of its favorite foods was right there for the taking.

The underside of a Spotted Sandpiper, though, is a completely different design. Here, the bird sports a wild array of black polka dots on a snow-white background. It’s cute and eye-catching in the extreme, and I can’t see how any female sandpiper can resist.

There are two Spotted Sandpipers hanging out at Shoveler’s Pond right now. You can often see them foraging along the pond edge in the early morning. Occasionally, one becomes really bold and ventures out into the water to hunt for a particularly attractive morsel. This makes the bird dangerously conspicuous, so it usually isn’t long before it seems to ask itself, “What was I thinking?” and rushes back to stand on the mud.

As they hunt and peck for food, Spotted Sandpipers seem compelled to bob their rear ends up and down in a kind of avian mambo. No one knows why they do this, but for a non-dancer like me, it is a treat to watch.

When I first started birding, I used to page through the field guides trying to fix birds’ various field marks in my mind so I would be able to identify any new bird I saw. I remember noticing how many birds have a yellow color scheme: warblers, goldfinches, tanagers, orioles, flycatchers – many of them are bright, bright yellow.

“How dumb can you get?” I thought. “A bright yellow bird would stand out from green leaves and brown branches like the caution part of a stoplight. You just couldn’t miss it.” I figured adding all these yellow species to my life list would be pie.

But I was wrong. Somehow, yellow blends in perfectly with green and brown, creating the ideal camouflage.

I got a good example of this the other day when I was over at Surber Grove (aka Yesler Swamp), trying to find Western Tanagers. Western Tanagers are towhee-sized songbirds that come through the Fill during spring migration. They breed in coniferous or mixed-coniferous forests, so they usually don’t stay here for long – we don’t have enough big trees for them. Surber can be a good place to find tanagers, though, because it does have dense scrub and a few tall cottonwoods and alders.

Sure enough, no sooner did I plunk down my camp stool than I heard a male singing deep in the trees. I craned my neck, searching every tree for him but I couldn’t find a trace. Then a little motion in a lacy-leafed tree drew my eye, and pop! out he hopped for exactly 1.5 seconds, just long enough for me to see he really was a tanager.  Then he dove back into the tree, never to be seen again.

Mind you, this tree is a very open-branched specimen. From my sidewalk perch, I can see all the way from the front of the tree to the back. Every branch is visible. I would say, every leaf. But that bird vanished as thoroughly as the Statue of Liberty magicked away by David Copperfield in his most famous trick. Just gone. And people scoff at UFO disappearances.

(Note: for  a YouTube demo of Copperfield’s trick, check out this link (if the link takes too long to download, click on the YouTube black box):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAEw-gtDkO4)

Scientists abhor anthropomorphism. I think it’s because as a group, they have a low gagging point. They fear the slippery slope of sappiness.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to deny the fact that we share much with other animals and even plants. We all need our space. We need to breathe and eat, procreate and die. Anyone who has owned a dog, for example, knows that dogs have feelings like we do. They can laugh and cry, feel shame, be exuberant.

It should thus come as no surprise that scientists at UC Santa Cruz recently reported that humans share significant portions of our DNA with animals. The scientists had matched nearly 500 animal DNA segments to ours. Thus, it’s not anthropomorphic to acknowledge what we have in common with other life forms with whom we share the planet. It’s just common sense.

Take fun, for example. While I would be the first to admit that potato bugs seem to have no liking for wild parties, college kids do. Therefore, at some point in the evolutionary timescale, the ability to have fun evolved. The question is: when?

The answer, in my opinion, is clearly: when crows evolved.

I’ve been watching the American Crows flying around lately in the gusty winds we’ve been experiencing at the Fill. Unlike most birds – who seem to prefer hunkering down on a sturdy limb or under a dense bush to wait out the storm – crows seem to love the wild wind. They leap into the air like hang gliders jumping off Mount Si, spread out their wings, and let their long black feather-fingers caress the air currents as the wind takes them where it will.

Five of them were at it over the greenhouse field this morning, when without warning, one of them broke formation and careened straight down. I thought it was going to crash into the greenhouse superstructure, like a WW II kamikaze aiming for the nearest aircraft carrier, but no. It was just diving for the heck of it. Having fun.

Blue-winged Teals are one of Washington’s oh-wow birds – a duck that, when sighted, causes the jaw to drop, the eyes to fill with wonder, and the mouth to say, “Oh wow.”

I’m not exactly sure why this is. Yes, the male teals have dramatic plumage: a gun-metal, bluish-gray head marked with snow-white crescents in front of the eyes; a chest covered  with cute little black spots on a beige background; and powder-blue wing patches that rival the sky in their blueness. But other ducks are far more colorful, including the Blue-wingeds’ close cousin, the Northern Shoveler, a duck with iridescent green head, bright mahogany body, white chest, and carrot-orange legs.

And maybe that’s the key. Blue-winged Teals are uncommon at the Fill. They come in April and May, stay for a few days, and then disappear to better breeding grounds in undisturbed fields and potholes around the state. I don’t see them every year, and even when I do, I know they are not going to hang around for long. They’re a confection. Mallards, Northern Shovelers, the ubiquitous Gadwalls are residents, more like everyday meat-and-potatoes . We’d miss them if they were gone, but we take them for granted as long as they’re here.

Not every creature on Earth is like this. You’d never catch a cow walking half a mile for one bite of borage. No, cows prefer abundance. A gull with one herring is not nearly as happy as a gull surrounded by a school of herring. Most animals shun rarity. They distrust the unusual. “Antiques Roadshow” would never make their A list.

We, on the other hand, value the rare. We’re crazy about the Mona Lisa because there’s only one. If every household had a Mona Lisa hanging in the kitchen window, its value would plummet to the level of a bullfighter on black velvet.

Maybe we should think about that. After all, clean air is common. So are parks, loved ones, the dawn chorus of robins, smiles. They deserve an “oh wow” even if they are everyday. Because they are every day.

The season’s first Canada Goose babies hatched out this past week, and the dad has become paranoidally protective. You wouldn’t think an animal with webbed feet and no teeth could be very fearsome, but geese are fully capable of taking on grown men. I know, because of Mr. Hissy.

Mr. Hissy was a male Canada Goose who decided to stake out the entire East Point as his territory one year. As April faded into May and his hormones cranked up, he began charging out of his grassy kingdom whenever anyone got near – mouth agape, eyes aflame, tongue sticking out, hissing like a broken steam pipe. It was totally intimidating.

I came home from a losing bout with Mr. Hissy one morning and complained to my husband that a goose was keeping me from visiting one of my favorite lookout spots. “I can’t even walk near East Point without that pesky goose attacking me,” I said.

“Well,” huffed my husband, “we’ll soon see about that.” John was offended that his own mate was being threatened by another male, avian though it might be. All his defensive hormones began to rage, and a faint brogue entered his speech. John claims a wild Scottish clansman as his ancestor, and I suspect he secretly yearns for a claymore.

The next morning, my hero accompanied me out to the point. When Mr. Hissy saw us, he came charging out as usual. In his eyes was the light of battle. On his lips (if he had had them) was his hissy battle cry. John puffed himself up, spread out his arms, and hissed right back. Mr. Hissy stopped dead in his tracks. He was baffled. No one had ever hissed at him before. He stalked back and forth through the grass, trying to figure out what to do. But it was no good. John was just too big and feisty. Mr. Hissy was forced to retreat.

As we continued down the trail, John remarked, “There, you see. You should have no more troub….” Pow! Mr. Hissy had taken flight and rammed John in the back of the head. We fled. Later on, after we got our breath back, John turned thoughtful. “You know, the Fill is home for all these birds – we’re just casual visitors. Maybe you should skip going to the point for a few days. It would be the kind and generous thing to do.” So I did.

John is still my knight in shining armor. Kindness requires its own heroism, you know.

Bald Eagles belong to the tough love school of child-rearing. Once the babies reach flying age, out of the nest they go, never to return. Not for eagles is the open-door policy of letting grown children return home to find themselves or find a job, whichever comes first. (In the interests of full disclosure here, let me say that I love it when my grown kids come home to live for awhile – if I had the money I would buy up the houses on either side of mine, connect them with tunnels and walkways, and have everyone live cheek by jowl. This dream causes my kids to run around in circles, screaming and pulling at their hair.)

One of the junior eagles has been stubbornly ignoring Ma and Pa Eagles’ attempts at tough love. He keeps coming back to the nest for food and care. I think he’s had some trouble adjusting to adult life. Earlier in the year, I saw him try to catch a coot, as his parents often do. He soared above the terrified flock, which was all hunched up in the middle of the lake. Then he dove on it, causing several individual coots to break formation. All good so far. But then, instead of choosing one hapless coot and stooping on it repeatedly until it became too exhausted to dive out of the way, the adolescent eagle dove on first one coot, then another, then another, until he himself was too exhausted to try anymore. Later on that day, I saw him catch a fish – unfortunately, a fish so tiny he could hold it in one foot, and even then it almost slipped out between the talons. It was the equivalent of half a Chicken McNugget, definitely not a Happy Meal.

Still, he does look like a healthy eagle. His wings are strong, his eye is clear. He’s finding something to eat every day. Which is just as well because Ma and Pa have their own troubles to worry about now. They’re sitting on eggs that will soon hatch, if they haven’t already. The next generation of eagles is well on its way.