Angry bird dive-bombing customers at Seattle parking lot

By Michelle Esteban Published: Jul 15, 2015 at 8:46 PM PDT

SEATTLE -- "Angry Birds" isn't just the name of a video game for patrons of a parking garage in downtown Seattle.

A territorial, diving-bombing seagull has people running for cover at one local lot.

You won't see many people or parked cars these days on the rooftop lot of Seattle's Goat Hill Parking Garage. A mamma seagull has staked out the lot for herself and her family, and nobody else is welcome there.

Many patrons know the bird is just doing what all good moms do and they're happy to give up their spot.

"It's internal, it's something you have no control over," said Kathy Tremper, who parks in the lot.

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‘Subirdia’: Surprisingly, birds thrive in suburban areas

Ornithologist and UW professor John Marzluff writes in his new book, “Welcome to Subirdia,” that the suburbs around Seattle provide habitat for a greater diversity of bird species than either the city or nearby forests. And after 12 years of study, he has some theories as to why.

John Marzluff bought two acres in suburbia 17 years ago. Marzluff and his wife, Colleen, are world-renowned wildlife researchers, and they purchased the forested tract in Snohomish County as a home for their nine sled dogs, their partners in previous research on raven behavior in the brutal Maine winter.

The dogs have passed to their reward, but Marzluff has turned his piece of suburbia into Subirdia, using knowledge gleaned from a life’s work with birds to turn his land into a haven.

The Marzluffs allow dead trees to stand — they’re visited by pileated woodpeckers, who dine on the termites within. (On one recent August day, Marzluff saw three of these majestic black, red and white birds.) Salmonberry hedges shelter Pacific wrens. Though the hum of the highway a block away is audible through the trees, the brush piles and feeders the Marzluffs have installed have attracted 60 bird species in all, including western tanagers, Pacific wrens, sparrows, towhees, juncos, Anna’s hummingbirds and owls, plus native red squirrels, Townsend’s chipmunks, tree frogs and coyotes.

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Seattle housing facility ticketed for bird death

Posted: Sep 13, 2014 1:03 PM GDTUpdated: Sep 13, 2014 1:03 PM GDT

SEATTLE (AP) - A senior housing facility in Seattle has been issued a $375 federal ticket for blowing nesting birds out of an air vent.

The Senior Housing Assistance Group facility at Cedar Park in North Seattle faces a misdemeanor charge of taking, killing or possessing migratory birds, after a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent said a manager there admitted that maintenance workers in July had "blown out" the vent to remove the birds, which included an adult violet-green swallow and at least three chicks. The adult bird suffered a broken wing and had to be euthanized.

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Where The Birds Are Is Not Where You'd Think

This is a trick question. Where would you expect to find the greatest variety of birds?

Downtown, in a city?

Or far, far from downtown — in the fields, forests, mountains, where people are scarce?

Or in the suburbs? In backyards, lawns, parking lots and playing fields?

Not the city, right?

"Everything I have learned as a conservation biologist tells me cities are bad for biodiversity," writes John Marzluff, of the University of Washington.

We all know this. Anyone who goes to downtown Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, L.A., Boston or New York will see the same five birds over and over: sparrows, starlings, mallards (ducks), geese, and, of course, street pigeons. Same goes for downtowns in Europe, Asia and South America. These five bird types are always there, always the same, never surprising. Rather than yawn, scientists have a category for this: "biotically homogenous." We've made cities. They've moved in.

A Seattle Experiment

But now comes a surprise. Actually, several surprises. When John Marzluff and his students went to downtown Seattle to count bird species, within the first 10 to 15 minutes they spotted pigeons, finches, sparrows, crows and an occasional hummingbird. Their count was 10 to 15 different kinds of birds — not many, but they expected that.

When they went the other way (to the far edge of the metropolitan area near the Cascade Mountains, where there is mostly forest, protected parks, reservoirs, and humans are sparse), in the first 10 to 15 minutes, they found a very different set of birds (woodpeckers, wrens, warblers, chickadees ...). In all, 20 different species — more, but not many more than downtown.

Then they went to the in-between zone, the Seattle suburbs, where they expected an in-between count, something like 12 different kinds of birds. But that's not what happened.

Read on

One tough old bird rules the parking lot

No harm, no fowl, say admirers of McNugget, the rooster who shares a downtown Issaquah parking lot with Your Espresso and Staples stores.

By Keith Ervin

Seattle Times staff reporter

He’s not exactly a wild creature, but he’s too independent to be considered a farm animal or a pet.

He’s a free-range kind of guy.

Since the bantam rooster known as McNugget first showed up in a downtown Issaquah parking lot 11 years ago, he’s stuck around and brought smiles to shoppers and passers-by.

Michelle Schneider, owner of the Your Espresso stand on Front Street North, was terrified when the black-feathered bird suddenly appeared one day at her window.

After calming down, she learned he had escaped from a customer of the nearby Grange Supply store. A Grange employee captured him, but he escaped again, and at that point, attempts to catch and return him to his owner ended.

McNugget, who was named in a poll of Your Espresso customers, hasn’t left since.

He sleeps in a maple tree next to the espresso stand and splits his days between the coffee shop, a Staples office-supply store and Issaquah Creek.

Baristas and a neighbor feed him chicken feed and mealworms. Customers and other admirers bring him treats.

When he’s hungry, he flies up to a serving window.

“If I say, ‘Down!’ ” — Schneider snaps her fingers — “he gets down. He’s like a dog.”

Issaquah’s land-use code prohibits keeping roosters in residential areas, but there’s no prohibition in the commercially zoned parking lot where McNugget roosts.

Charming though he can be, the rooster does have a cantankerous streak, known on occasion to attack people in wheelchairs and on bicycles and motorcycles. And — since being clamped in the jaws of a pit bull — he refuses to be intimidated by curious canines.

Kristin Parshall, a Fall City animal-rights advocate who gave McNugget a doghouse, isn’t happy that he lives with no other protection against cold weather or predators. “If he was a white fluffy dog,” she says, “people would not be OK with it, but because he’s a chicken he’s devalued.”

A King County Regional Animal Services supervisor found no records of complaints about McNugget from 2009 on, and Issaquah has received no requests for a ban on roosters downtown.

“There are people on occasion who find him to be a nuisance,” said Mayor Ava Frisinger. “But I think most people, to the extent they notice McNugget, are happy to see McNugget.”

He’s become a senior citizen. Chickens often die by the time they’re 8, and rarely live beyond 15, said Michelle Boman, a chicken owner and operations manager of the Grange Supply.

As a “flock animal,” Boman said, McNugget seems to have adopted the neighborhood pigeons as his flock.

On one recent afternoon, the rooster was on the grass outside the shop when barista Candice Mercado called out to him just as Issaquah resident Pat McGrath got out of a car and threw him some Ritz crackers.

“If they’re good enough for me, they’re probably good enough for him,” said McGrath. “He’s an independent chap, so he’s a good ad for freedom.”

Jene Kramer, owner of The Boarding House restaurant at Gilman Village, smiles when she sees the rooster peering in fascination at Staples’ reflective-glass windows.

“I just think he is in love with himself,” Kramer says. “He’s handsome and he’s hilarious.”

Perhaps his biggest fan is Schneider: “Oh, yeah, I love the little guy. He makes my day.”

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021206062_issaquahroosterxml.html

Rescued egret chick grows up fast, is released along Yakima River

A baby egret that was rescued from its nest after its mother disappeared was released into the wild in West Richland on Monday.

A new great white egret joined the birds that feed on fish in the Yakima River near West Richland on Monday.

The young egret cruised from the slough just north of the Van Giesen Street bridge to the first slight bend in the river and then back again, its neck curved in an S shape and its long black legs trailing behind him.

The bird, maybe 2 months old, had spent about half its life at the Blue Mountain Wildlife rehabilitation center in Pendleton after being rescued near Sunnyside before it could fly.

Mary Marquez and her husband, Bob, have lived on acreage east of Sunnyside for 14 years, but the six great white egrets that flew in this year were the first they'd seen, Mary said.

"We were absolutely delighted," she said. Even better, an egret nest appeared in the trees around one of the three ponds on their property.

Continued:  http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019324720_egret03.html