Subject: A few grassland birds, pied robin
Date: Jan 23 22:38:42 1999
From: Kelly Mcallister - mcallkrm at dfw.wa.gov


In the scenic Evergreen Valley pasturelands today (between Olympia and
Yelm, abuts Fort Lewis property), I found one of my target birds,
a Western Meadowlark. American Kestrels were easily seen, I believe
that I was looking at four separate individuals. One came into
the horse arena at about 5:00 p.m. and roosted in the rafters. I am
told that he does so regularly, perhaps nightly.

Other raptors about included two Red-tailed hawks, an adult Bald Eagle,
and a Northern Harrier. I briefly scanned some large flocks of wigeon
in the flooded pasture and saw four Eurasian Wigeons with little
effort. I have been surprised this year how easy it is to find
Eurasian Wigeons in the wigeon flocks of Thurston and Pierce Counties.

I walked out into one hayfield and robins began flushing. I saw what I
thought was my second shrike in the last week but when I got it in
my scope, I saw that it was a pied robin. Its head was mostly white.
It had white primaries on both wings and a few stray white blotches
elsewhere, like on the back. From a distance, it definitely was an
eye-catcher.

I really wanted to find a rare or challenging sparrow today but only
found Song, Golden-Crowned, and Fox Sparrows.

Kelly McAllister