Dennis, I hope you don't mind my forwarding this to the list. It's just
too interesting not to share.

I bumped into Dennis who was leading a field trip on Sunday along the
Umtanum road on the way to Wenas Campground. --Dan

Dan Victor, Seattle, Washington <dvictor at u.washington.edu>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 13:22:51 -0800
From: Dennis Paulson <dpaulson at ups.edu>

No, I wasn't doing a Birdathon trip, although people in the vans both days
did so. Our species lists weren't anything great, as we stayed in the
1000-2500' level through the day and saw only a few water birds--70
something for each birdathoner (group total lists for the two days 85 and
86 species; I've had over 100 on similar trips).

We saw singing lazuli buntings really close in the willow/aspen grove just
as you start up Umtanum Rd., always one of my favorite stops. A chat sang
briefly there Saturday, and Tom Hahn whistled it into view, but we couldn't
get a peep out of it Sunday. We didn't find the horned owls, probably went
to the wrong area. The whole campground was pretty dead, but we saw a pygmy
nuthatch briefly and had a few things come in to pygmy-owl tooting. I felt
bird numbers weren't all that great anywhere, compared with memories of
other years (which are probably faulty).

On the way back, I let the other van go ahead, which was too bad, because a
woman in my van (who had never seen one) blurted out "there's a
white-headed woodpecker" as we drove back down Umtanum Rd. It had been
foraging on a fencepost at the edge of the road, and by the time we got
back, this beautiful black, white and red creature was on a 1' high
bitterbrush, framed by yellow flowers, no more than 10' from the van in
full sun at eye level. Wow! As we admired it at length, it sat there gazing
back at us, then flew back onto the fencepost, then to the base of several
pine trunks, then flew away. An absolutely stunning experience.

Dennis