This is bird note.

It's late afternoon on a winter day along Washington's Cooley lakes.

Towering basalt faces glow ochre brown in the slanting light of the low sun.

Waterfowl crowd the lakes, but few birds perch along the stony barricades.

A golden eagle watches from atop the cliff as a common

raven glides by its call reverberating off the rock face.

As the sun sinks lower, a flock of hundreds of songbirds suddenly appears, an ungulating cloud that swarms into the upper levels of the rim rock. They are gray-crowned rosy finches,

coming to roost for the night

in an extensive colony of abandoned cliff swallow nests.

The nests neatly constructed mud jugs with slender openings offer shelter from freezing nighttime temperatures.

Grey-crowned rosy finches nest high in the mountains in summer and roam the countryside in large

flocks in winter in search of weed seeds and waste grain.

These veterans of the cold mountains appreciate the snug night roost of a cliff swallow's nest,

left behind like a timeshare condo by the swallows now warming themselves in Mexico.

Once again the calls of Greyc day and you can get the sights as well when you

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