Hi folks,

Took a bit of vacation last week, and ran 'my' Breeding Bird Survey route east of Ritzville, in Adams and ending in Lincoln counties.

Breeding bird surveys are set up so that you start at 0-dark-thirty (half an hour before sunrise), count all the birds that you can see/hear for 3 minutes, jump in the car and drive for 1/2 mile, then do it again, and again, and... for 50 stops.

The "Keystone" route begins at Cow Lake, 10 miles east of Ritzville, then tends north through the wheat and low sage country, past the Keystone grain elevator, across Crab Creek, to Lords Creek, and finishes along Highway 23 a few miles SE of Harrington. The weather was perfect - not a cloud in the sky, no to light breeze to none again, the temp was 41*F at 4:26am and 68*F at 9am.

Following the protocol of the survey, I saw/heard the following:

Species Count Stops
Gadwall 1 1
Cinnamon Teal 3 2
Mallard 17 7
Shoveler 3 2
Am Bittern 1 1
W Grebe 4 2
Blk-crn Night Heron 6 2
N Harrier 5 4
Coot 3 2
Spotted Sandpiper 1 1
Killdeer 5 4
Common Snipe 1 1
Ring-billed Gull 138 17
Calif. Gull 3 2
C Nighthawk 6 6
Horned Lark 101 37
Vesper Sparrow 10 7
Savannah Sparrow 91 30
Grasshopper Sparrow 27 16
Brewer's Sparrow 5 4
Lazuli Bunting 2 1
W Meadowlark 172 44
Brn-headed Cowbird 9 5
Yellow-headed Blackbird 20 3
Brewer's Blackbird 59 12
Red-winged Blackbird 54 12
Bullock's Oriole 1 1
Swainson's Hawk 4 4
Red-tailed Hawk 3 3
Am Kestrel 3 3
Ring-necked Pheasant 35 24
Gray Partridge 3 2
Cliff Swallow 89 13
Barn Swallow 24 12
Blk-billed Magpie 3 3
Am Crow 5 3
Raven 1 1
Common Yellowthroat 1 1
Am Robin 6 5
Sage Thrasher 2 2
Willow Flycatcher 3 2
Mourning Dove 12 6
Rock Dove 19 4
W Kingbird 7 5
E Kingbird 4 2
House Wren 2 1 At farmstead
House Sparrow 8 1 "
Starling 5 2

Besides the birds, there were a couple of coyotes howling and yipping a greeting to the rising sun. Another coyote was trying to sneak up on a pasture full of ground squirrels - who were keeping their eye on her.. Saw 3 white-tailed deer bucks standing among some biscuit-and-scab that had 'biscuits' almost as big as the Mima Mounds, and quite a number of cattle (including a very large Hereford bull who didn't like my standing next to HIS fenceline in the pre-dawn...)

The day before, I saw a Black-necked stilt fly over the starting point at Cow Lake, and *after* the count, there was an Avocet feeding in a rain puddle that just had a couple ducks in it two hours before. But, if you don't see them during the 3 minute window, they don't count.

There were 3 vehicles that passed by while I was counting - hardly enough to disturb the counting. A couple of farmer/ranchers came by to check out the strange vehicle stopping along "their" (county) roadways... gave some opportunity to do a little PR for the birds. Then, back to town for breakfast by 10am...

One thing to take note of is that 13 of my 50 (26%) stops were adjacent to Conservation Reserve Program plantings. The CRP is where Congress, in its wisdom, is paying farmers not to grow wheat on lands that have a high potential for erosion. Basically, The farmers bid the lands into the program, and get payments to plant the land to a grass cover and maintain it for 10 years. A lot of the ground was coming up on its 10-year date, and was being bid again to keep it in the Conservation Reserve program.

There's been a bit of press (and Congressional inquiry) on the CRP re-bids in Washington not being up to the national average, as only 22% of the re-bid lands were accepted into the program. Basically, the USDA folks in Washington followed the 'rules', and a lot of land that was put into CRP didn't qualify for re-bidding according to standards for the nation-wide CRP system. Some of the reason was that there were single-species plantings, no shrubs, etc., etc.

To stand on the Soap-Box for a minute, I'd like to share my observation that most of the 'prairie' birds that I saw/heard on the survey were either in the grazed or ungrazed sage/cheatgrass/bunchgrass, or they were in the CRP plantings. Many of the CRP plantings were "just" crested wheatgrass, with not much else. But -- they had savannah and grasshopper sparrows and meadowlarks in pretty good numbers. The stuff with 'structure' (sage or rabbitbrush coming in) had more species diversity, of course. But the Wheat and the Wheat Stubble and the fallow Wheat lands had basically NOTHING! A few Horned Larks are about all you'll see in the farmed ground -- and that's what we'll have if the ground gets broken out and replanted to grain.

I think that it's well worth all of our time to write (or email) our Congress-people to urge that the US Dept Agriculture do all they can to ensure that the Conservation Reserve Program lands *remain* in place. If they are not re-bid into the program, the farmers'll have to "break them out" to get a wheat crop off (got to pay the rent somehow....), and we'll lose one of the best habitat conservation programs to come our way in a long time. 600,000 acres of song bird habitat are in the balance.

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net