Thanks to Randy Hill for his recent reporting on the Othello area cranes;
yesterday I made a long but fast day trip from Seattle to milepost 30 (S.R.
26) along Crab Creek and found around 400 cranes just to the south, exactly
where Randy suggested looking during mid day. I heard them well before I
spotted them, often seeing them cascading down from high in the sky. I
seldom even got out of the car, just used my window mounted scope. About a
dozen avocets, and pintails and wigeons were on the north side of the road.

Later I went to a pond just west of Dodson Road, about 2 miles south of
I-90, and found cinnamon & green winged teal, avocets, black necked stilts,
redheads, gadwalls, pintails, wigeons, a harrier, and shovelers. And a
muskrat. No egrets, which I had hoped to find due to frequent past
observations at that spot, but there were more stilts (~6) than I'm used to
seeing there. Water was much higher than I've seen before. In late
afternoon, from the WDFW access, the sun provides ideal lighting of the long
narrow pond to the east.

Saw a shrike (loggerhead?) on the power lines along Crab Creek Rd near
Smyrna that was being harried by a kestrel. Got my first mosquito bites of
1999.

Kevin Li
Seattle