Columbia Estuary Report - 1/18/99

A TURKEY VULTURE was cruising over a pasture on Waterhouse Rd near
Brownsmead this morning. This would be about a month ahead of typical
spring arrival. A nicely marked male COMMON TEAL was among the GREEN-
WINGED TEAL on Jackson Rd and a WHITE-THROATED SPARROW was in a large
flock of Zonos on Pentilla Rd.

My primary goal on my trip today to Brownsmead was to do my annual
raptor count and the overall numbers were disappointing. I was able
to find only 3 BALD EAGLES and even RED-TAILED HAWK numbers were low.
I blame the mild winter.

I did not find the Blind Slough ARCTIC LOON (last possible sighting
was Saturday 1/16). I saw only 1 PACIFIC LOON, 7 COMMON LOONS and
many RED-THROATED LOONS. A word of caution to Arctic Loon watchers:
the white sides and flank are useful for sorting Pacific from Arctic,
but not Red-throated from Arctic. There are many pretenders in Blind
Slough all of them Red-throats. I watched one particularly dark bird
with a very dagger-like (rather than upturned) bill for quite some
time. Carefully observe all field marks.

I did see an interesting large loon with a pale brown head and medium
brown mantle. Its bill was all white, the culmen was straight and the
lower mandible turned up sharply at the gonys. I'm going to ponder my
videotape before committing to a species, but loon seekers may want to
keep an eye out...

Brownsmead Raptor Count 1/18/99
Turkey Vulture 1
Bald Eagle 3
Northern Harrier 2
Red-tailed Hawk 8
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
American Kestrel 1
Merlin 1
Peregrine 2


--
Mike Patterson "Change comes one funeral at a time"
Astoria, OR Doc Hatfield-in response to the question: Why
mpatters at orednet.org don't more cattlemen choose to use a proven
method of range management that is more
economically AND environmentally sound.

http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html