Subject: Still more Black-throated Sparrows in eastern WAshington
Date: Aug 1 17:04:09 1997
From: "Andy Stepniewski" - steppie at wolfenet.com


Fellow Tweets,

I led the now annual "Pelican Spectacular" fieldtrip to the Potholes region
last night for the Yakima Valley Audubon Society.

The best bird of the trip was found by Bev Clark, who met us at the turnoff
by I-90. While waiting for the group to arrive, she found a lone adult
Black-throated Sparrow at the junction of the I-90 South Frontage Rd. and
D.5 in Grant County. This is a few miles west of Moses Lake and just a few
hundred yards south of the entrance to the Potholes Wildlife Area.. The
sparrow was keeping company with adult Lark Sparrows that were feeding
their not-yet-fledged juvenile (in all likelihood, from their second
brood).

The habitat at the site was the rabbitbrush/bitterbrush (Purshia)
shrub-steppe typical of that part of the central Columbia Basin. The sandy
ground surface was covered with a patchy cryptogam crust, but there seemed
to be more dirt than crust.

The nearby Potholes rookery was, as usual, spectacular. We saw about 40
Great Egrets, sawrms of cormorants, and a good number of night-herons and
other waterfowl. There were juvenal-plumaged terns of three species:
Caspian, Forster's and Black. We noted eight species of shorebirds:
Killdeer, Greater (50+) and Lesser (8) Yellowlegs, Solitary Sandpiper (5+),
Spotted Sandpiper (3), Western (2) and Least (15) Sandpipers, and Common
Snipe.

The cacophany of juvenile cormorants and egrets at sunset in the warm and
muggy stillness reminded several of us that this really couldn't be
Washington, but someplace along a bayou in Louisiana.

For the second year in a row, however, it was a "Pelicanless Spectacular."
These great birds might be moving in later in the summer as Potholes water
levels get lower (thus concentrating fish, like we've all seen on the
wildlife films of Africa or the llanos of South America).

If anyone is into pulling more loosestrife, this area of the potholes is
begging for help. I think it would be a shame to see another Columbia Basin
wetland decimated byscourge (yet so pretty) alien.

Perhaps, too, I'd better rename the trip...

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato WA