Subject: Common Goldeneye, Soap Lake
Date: Jun 29 19:45:54 1996
From: "M. Smith" - whimbrel at u.washington.edu


On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:
> common goldeneyes are quite rare breeders in the state, and ...
> habitats within that zone. A breeding common was reported from Soap Lake,
> Okanogan Co., a few years ago, and I remember thinking "a lake in the
> middle of sagebrush is such unusual habitat for Barrow's, maybe it *was* a
> common." Well, I visited that lake last weekend and saw a number of female
> Barrow's and no commons on it. Bear in mind that female Barrow's don't

Not ignoring Dennis' excellent discussion on the importance of documenting
your sightings...

Just to clear up this little controversy, I checked the BBA card just now
for that block. June 23, 1991, Andy Stepniewski recorded a brood of
Commons at this lake. It should also be noted that there are *two* Soap
Lakes in Washington, one in Okanogan Co. (T32R25ESE), and one in Grant
County. Andy's brood was in the Okanogan Co. Soap Lake. Aside from that
site, I have only six other locations in the state where this species has
bred in recent years:

Deep Lake (Stevens Co.) 1993
Conners Lake (Okanogan Co.) 1992
Big Meadow Lake (Pend Oreille Co.) multiple years, including 1996
Lake Beth (Okanogan) 1991
Little Beaver Lake (Okanogan) 1996
Bayley Lake (Stevens) 1996

I did make a point of checking up on the ID of the 1996 citings I listed.

I was fascinated by the Scaled Quail report - surely a new release by
either a private individual or WDFW.

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