Hi Tweets,

Eric Greenwood writes:

(snip)
>>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.

Dennis Paulson, in reply, writes:

>No WTSW records west of Cascades, to my knowledge.
>

One evening in June in the mid- or late 'Eighties (I'm at work, so I don't
have the exact date in front of me), a pair of White-throated Swifts passed
very close (20-30 meters) over my head while I was walking in the Kitsilano
area of Vancouver BC. I first saw them paralleling the Burrard Inlet
shoreline at a distance of several hundred meters, realised there was
something unusual about them, tried without success as they approached to
fit them into Black (BLSW) or Vaux's Swift (VASW) shape and behavior, then
saw the distinctive markings as they passed overhead. This was a lifer
sighting for me, as I had not yet been to the semi-arid areas they frequent.

In spite of definitive scrutiny and described details on plumage, behavior,
proportions, and comparisons (admittedly not direct) to the two local swifts
with which I'm very familiar, this observation was rejected by the Vancouver
BC Rarities Committee, hence the lack of at least one record from "west of
the Cascades".

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net