Eric Greenwood wrote:

>I've just spent some time at our summer cottage on Cultus Lake; (snip)
>
>Two weeks ago I caught a 10-second glimpse of a swift. Too large for Vaux
>so my immediate reaction was Black until I noticed a substantial patch of
>white on the belly area. No binos handy to get a good look, so; I was
>either fooled by the light, had a part-albino Black Swift or it was a
>White-throated. The nearest colonies of Whited-throated that I know of are
>in the Okanagon. Are there any south of us in Washington State? I seem to
>remember reading that these birds travel up to 200km in search of food.

No WTSW records west of Cascades, to my knowledge.

>This evening I was watching a couple of Common Nighthawks when an odd
>swallow caught my eye. This time I grabbed the binos fast enough to catch a
>fly-past of three Purple Martins. I'd second-guess this observation if I
>hadn't spent an hour last week studying the Purple Martins at Maplewood
>Flats. Any way, are there any other reports of Purple Martins away from the
>coast in Washington State?

They occur inland at least a few miles in this area, and I wouldn't be
surprised if they might be seen farther east yet, but they're not, for the
most part. I guess you'd need to consider their overall status in southern
BC, which sounds to me fairly tenuous. But birds fly, and swallows fly
well and fast, so why not?

This does point out an interesting feature of bird observations, and
especially rare-bird observations. They seem to have two components: (1)
Did you identify the bird correctly? (2) How likely was the bird in that
place at that time? (2) always has an influence on whether you are
believed or not, and the lower the probability of (2), the more effort you
have to put into (1). It seems that as soon as it is established that a
species does occur at a particular place in a particular season, then
records of it are freely accepted. *However*, only if records are accepted
are we confident the species occurs at that place in that season, so this
is the catch-22 of birding.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416