Subject: Gene Hunn: on E.WA and Tri-colored Blackbirds
Date: Jun 21 00:58:26 1999
From: Pterodroma at aol.com - Pterodroma at aol.com


I thoroughly enjoyed Gene Hunn's interesting and informative account of his
recent whirlwind Eastern Washington trip and the his discussion of the
Tri-colored Blackbird in Washington. Somehow, I had missed the latter until
it was repeated in another recent post to the listserv. Sometimes a story in
which 'successful failures' combined with the 'successful successes' make for
very interesting and enlightening reading. Your description of the blackbird
flock 'decamping' before they could be perused adequately was particularly
amusing. Excellent descriptive choice of words; I hadn't thought of it in
exactly those terms before, but it's perfectly appropriate for a blackbird
flock. They just up and do that (decamp) sometimes with human intrusion or
just for reasons known only to them.

Your mention of having not birded some of those areas for 20 years and being
disadvantaged with the 1972 version of Whal & Paulson Washington Bird Finding
Guide on your Eastern Washington trip brought to mind something else.
Speaking of 'out of date', we're all waiting with bated breath for a revision
to your 1982 "Birding in Seattle and King County" :-)). I need not remind
anyone that a god-awful lot has changed around here since 1982. Many areas
have at least suffered significant compromise if not gone altogether.

One might think that inside the city limits of San Francisco might be worse.
There was an interesting account of a major big year listing competition by
several birders in San Francisco and focusing their efforts exclusively to
areas strictly within in the city limits which was published recently in
"Winging It". At a glance, this might seem like a rather boring and
frustrating venture. Contrare -- What these hard core birders learned by
pounding every inch of pavement within the city day in and day out was to
discover a number of 'new' areas and hot spots previously unknown. What I
thought was going to be rather dull reading turned out to very interesting.
Maybe it's time to beat the pavement around Seattle and King County in search
of new birding sites, updating old ones, and sharing the whole lot in a *NEW*
revised edition of "Birding in Seattle and King County 2000".

Richard Rowlett (Pterodroma at aol.com)
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA