Hi Tweets, here are a few sightings from the ALE site in Benton Co.,
yesterday (Monday March 20):

3 Long-billed Curlews
3 Chukar
1 Red-tail
2 Ferruginous Hawks one a *dark* morph bird, and a light one near an old nest
2 Prairie Falcons near an old nest
2 Ravens
Robins
1 Hermit Thrush (in riparia)
18,765,234,976,432,238,123.2 Horned Larks
A similar number of Meadowlarks
Song Sparrow
RS Towhee singing
House Finch

VG Swallows were seen at Crab Creek

Despite an early start and many square miles of suitable habitat, we did
not have any of the sagebrush sparrows, but Bill R. of Battelle had a
singins male Sage Sparrow as early as Feb. 18 there, and another biologist
at Battelle had 4 on different days within the past 2 weeks.

Not knowing much about Ferruginous Hawks I would like to query tweets on
the status of dark birds in WA. Is this a 'usual' bird whom locals know?
I looked in my Clark & Wheeler guide to hawks (Peterson series) and they
say less than 10% of FEHAs are dark-morphs. If you're curious, here are
my field notes on it:

Dark buteo soaring at roughly 100-200 yards. Circling bird yields dorsal
and ventral views. Dorsal view is dark overall, appearing black from
this distance, except with an *unbanded* whitish tail. Ventral view is
dark on leading edge of wing, with flight feathers whitish. No barring
on flight feathers, and tail whitish.

__________________________
Mike Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html