Christmas Bird Count is bird-watchers' annual delight

The sun has dipped to its nadir, and the winter birds are here, enlivening a quiet season.

One of the best places to enjoy them is at the Union Bay Natural Area, one of the premier birding destinations on the West Coast, right here in Seattle.

With her blue hat and three-legged portable stool at the ready, Connie Sidles, a Seattle writer, has been birding at the natural area since 1985. And it never ceases to hold her interest.

"I practically live here," Sidles said on a recent morning as a marsh wren tick-ticked from the cattails. A kingfisher zoomed overhead, clacking its signature call. Double-crested cormorants hung their wings out to dry, and a great blue heron stilt-walked the shallows.

"I like coming here in every season, and every time you see something different," Sidles said. "I don't know any other experience in life in which you are always going to get a surprise, and it will always be a good one."

She loves just sitting still on her stool, watching for what might change in the cove as morning turns into midday.

"Nature gives you that peace of mind, and here is nature right in the city," Sidles said. "If you want solitude, you can find it here. If you want companionship, that's here, too."

And how. Over the years, she has come to know some birds as individuals, including a red-tailed hawk she says has learned to eat coots instead of rodents.

She believes the hawk learned it from a pair of eagles she says hasn't bothered to catch fish in years because there are so many coots and other ducks for the eating.

She's learned the precise sound of a bufflehead duck's extended toes slicing into the water as it lands. And she has taken the time to decide exactly the color of the plumage on a hooded merganser's head, when its hood is flexed open and backlit by the sun. "Coconut Popsicle," she said.

The Union Bay Natural Area, owned by the University of Washington, is a made-over place. Once a lake, then a peat marsh, then a dump and now a natural area, it's home to some 200 species of birds, from waterfowl to songbirds to raptors. Birds swim the waters near shore, snug into the layered winter scrub of cattails and willows, and cruise across open meadows and tussocks of grasses, golden from winter kill.

"It's amazing how beautiful brown can be," Adam Sedgley said as he toted a birding scope around the trails of the natural area. The glory of the many shades of brown: a winter birder's anthem, if ever there was.

But Sedgley, science associate at the Seattle chapter of the Audubon Society, says it with the zeal of a lifelong birder. And he's gearing up for what amounts to the local birding Olympics on Saturday: the annual Christmas Bird Count, sponsored by the Audubon Society.

It's a day to count anything that flies — "anything with feathers and a pulse," Sedgley said. In addition to enjoying winter birds, volunteers can learn plenty from the experienced birders Audubon deploys for the daylong event.

The count generates surprises every year. In 2008, wigeons turned up in the top-five spot for most populous species, news to gladden the heart of anyone who has come to love the calliope music of a raft of the ducks, peeping their soft call.

The Union Bay Natural Area is a hot spot for species diversity and sheer numbers every year in the Christmas Bird Count — as is Discovery Park. But even some of the city's more urban parks offer unexpected birding delights.

Right off Beach Drive in West Seattle, a work crew was hacking out invasive holly and laurel on a recent morning at Seattle's Me-Kwa-Mooks Park. Traffic zipped along the road. Yet, golden crowned kinglets lit up the canopy overhead, the birds' yellow-striped plumage brightening the pale light.

Across the road and just over the sea wall, water birds bobbed and dipped on Puget Sound.

"Definitely a crowd pleaser," Sedgley said as a harlequin duck swam by with regal poise. The ducks are drawn to the rocky shore, making this the best place in the city to view harlequins, Sedgley said.

Oyster gray clouds peeled back from the Olympics, shining with fresh snow, while on a floating log, a cormorant wagged its head from side to side, downing a fish nearly too fat for its throat. A cormorant's Christmas feast.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com