Reto,

Nice to hear a report from an old stomping ground. I spent a week at Mt.
Robson in 1972 and all summer in 1974. Well do I remember an early morning
June birdwalk up the Kinney Lake Rd from the Nature House with Dick
Cannings. We had the following warblers:
Tennessee Warbler
Orange-crowned Warbler
Yellow Warbler-
Magnolia Warbler+
Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warbler
Townsend's Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
American Redstart
Northern Waterthrush
MacGillivray's Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Wilson's Warbler

The variety of habitats on that road are amazing: spruce forest, riparian,
birch glades, bogs with black spruce, lodgepole pine, shrublands, tall
cottonwoods. All the above are regular breeders there. This complement of
warblers interests me as a Washingtonian, because from the top of the
Salmo-Priest Wilderness in extreme NE Washington, one can barely make out
the Cariboos, but one valley south of Mt. Robson. The boreal warblers such
as Blackpoll and eastern woodland Tennessees are so close to us as breeders!
I suspect a birder stationed at Bunchgrass Meadows in NE Washington would
have a good chance at Blackpoll Warbler in mid to late June and Magnolia in
the lower forests (two sightings in 1996 of singing males elsewhere in NE
Washington).

You got me all charged up to visit that great place again.

BTW, Dick got Black and White Warbler there in 1974 and carefully documented
the beginnings of a massive White-winged Crossbill movement southwest across
BC which later spread into NE Washington.

Robson is also a great place to look for caribou (headwaters of the Fraser
and Willow Ptarmigan, about their southern limit in the Rockies (they go
much farther south in the Coast Mtns just N of Vancouver.

Another goody I noted in July '76 were singing Grey-cheeked Thrush in the
Tonquin Valley just a few miles from Robson in Alberta. CWS biologists and
birders have been finding this very southern outpost somewhat regularly in
the years since (in scrub subalpine fir near Amethyst Lodge).These few birds
represent a very disjunct colony.

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato WA
>Hi Tweets,
>
>last weekend was a long one in B.C., so we went off for a backcountry
>trip in Mt. Robson Prov.Park (highest peak in the Canadian Rockies;
>adjacent to Jasper Nat'l Park). And we even saw the peak - half a minute or
>so.
>Some rain did not help with bird sightings, as juvenile chirping and
>plumage did not help with ID. Anyway, we got more than 20 species.
>The unexpected birds of the weekend were 2 Western Tanager in open spruce in
>the forefield of a glacier, altitude 1600m. Also, comments on the gulls
>up there are welcome.
>
>Harlequin Duck (2fem, with 5chicks)
>Canada Goose 5
>Spotted Sandpiper 2
>Gull sp. (a flock of 21 big ones)
>Three-toed Woodpecker (fem; Kinney Lake; lifer for me)
>Red-breasted Nuthatch
>Common Raven
>Gray Jay
>Clark's Nutcracker
>Rufous Hummingbird
>Violet-green Swallow
>Barn Swallow
>Am.Pipit
>Golden-crowned Kinglet
>Am.Robin
>Hermit Thrush
>Townsend's Solitaire (?) (alt. 1800m)
>Western Tanager
>Wilson's Warbler
>Townsend's Warbler
>Yellow Warbler
>Chipping Sparrow ++
>White-crowned Sparrow
>Dark-eyed Junco
>
>Reto Riesen
>Dept. Chem., UBC
>Vancouver, BC
>riesenr at chem.ubc.ca
>
>