Some people tromp through the woods looking for Bigfoot. Others troll a certain lake in northern Scotland in search of Nessie.
I've just wanted to see the famous parakeets of Seward Park.
I'd heard stories, of course, which had taken on the status of urban myth in my mind. Seattle and parakeets just don't seem to mix - we're too far north. I'd seen a wild flock in San Francisco, but that's California, where the palm trees grow.
But parakeets in Seattle, the gateway to Alaska?
I'd heard enough stories from reliable types - "they're big and green and raucous" - that I didn't doubt their existence.
But I just wanted to see them for myself, to glimpse a flash of the tropics in a city where jaywalking is bad form, and gray, for a good part of the year, is the presiding color.
So last Friday I linked up with Bradley Enghaus, our photographer, in the poplar shade of the Seward Park parking lot. Bradley strapped on his camera, tied his blue bandanna around his head, and off we went up the road on the east side of Anderson Bay.
The day was hot. The shouts and laughter of the children splashing in the swimming area had the timeless quality of a summer afternoon. A north wind ruffled the lake. Straight north, the I-90 bridge was busy with pour souls in their cars.
We kept our ears cocked and our eyes on the trees. All we heard and saw, though, were the crows, which shall inherit the earth.
Then we heard the piercing call of a flicker. Then the complaint of a loon. We listened harder: It was really a car alarm across the lake.
Anchored runabouts rocked gently in the water where one fellow fly fished, his line glittering in the sunlight. We kept on walking, listening and looking. Nothing. Bradley took a picture of a crow. "We went to Seward Park and all we saw was this lousy crow," Bradley muttered, getting impatient, and possibly thinking of a future in the T-shirt business.
I stopped a middle-aged walker. "Have you seen the parakeets?" I inquired.
"They're parrots, aren't they?" he mused.
"I'm not sure. Have you ever seen them?"
"No, but I've heard them."
Parrots or parakeets?
Seward Park is a precious ecosystem and artist's colony. In the beginning, Native Americans lived here along the lake, fishing and trapping. In the early part of the last century John Charles Olmsted recommended the area be incorporated into a projected boulevard system of parks and in 1911 the city bought the land from the Bailey family for $322,000.
The new park was named after William Seward, architect of the acquistion of Alaska. The brick bathhouse was built in 1927.
The park has a mellow, off-the beaten-path feel, unlike Golden Gardens or Alki. The lily pads west of the bath house would catch Monet's eye. Herons, lovers of solitude, keep watch over the park's waters. The swimming area isn't a muscle beach and bikini scene, at least on weekdays - it's more family oriented.
As we walked we passed a mother teaching her daughter how to ride a bike, a number of couples biking, and a few people just out walking.
I stopped one guy in his 20s.
I asked him my usual question.
"No, I haven't seen them," he said. "But I heard they're parrots."
Big help. We marched on.
We walked around in the heat for nearly an hour. I found myself wishing I'd brought my swimming trunks. The crows continued to caw. We gave up. Back in the parking lot, while putting our stuff in our cars, a young woman approached us. She wore a straw hat and carried a young child.
"Did you see the parrots?" she asked.
She pointed up into the trees. We heard loud squawking - raucous, in fact, as advertised. Bradley quickly unpacked his camera equipment and marched off.
Her name was Betina Simmons and she lived nearby. It turned out the exotic birds visit her hawthorn tree in late summer and early fall to feast on the berries.
"They're bright green with a little bit of yellow on their faces," Betina said. "The first time I saw them, I couldn't believe it."
As I looked up a flash of green shot over the parking lot and above the trees, squawking. Bradley reappeared, shaking his head. He said the others had flown in a different direction. "You'd have to camp out here a week to get them on camera," he said. They're technically parakeets, according to Woody Wheeler, director of Audubon Centers for Audubon Washington.
"There are about 15 nesting pairs in Seward Park," Wheeler reported in a later phone conversation, and those pairs are conures, which belong to the parakeet family. They grow up to 14 inches, which is a lot bigger than the cute little budgies one sees in pet stores.
Wheeler referred to the writings of Paul Talbert, who in his "Birds of Seward Park" says, "They have been identified by local birders as Chapman's mitred conure or crimson-fronted conure, or possibly a mixed flock of these two, closely related species."
No doubt they're the descendents of pet cage escapees, Talbert noted, who like to eat big leafed maple flowers, fruits, seeds and sunflower seeds. Talbert writes that the flock ranges around the lake and in winter anyway, has been seen as far afield as Maple Leaf, just south of Northgate - a seemingly odd choice for winter digs.
"They're abundant in Los Angeles," Wheeler said.
Yes, but Seattle's not L.A.
"Our winter's aren't that harsh," Wheeler noted. "They're native to Peru, which has mountains. They're even in Chicago."
What about predators, especially eagles and crows?
"Probably not eagles," Wheeler said of the magnificent birds who like to hunt fish. As for the crows: "The parakeets can probably hold their own. They're loud and raucous."
In Seward Park, anyway, the crows have met their match.
