Tweeters:

On Friday afternoon Fred Bird and I saw a flock of at least 40 Mountain
Bluebirds on the north side of the Old Vantage Highway, just east of milepost
13. I counted 46 through my bins as they flitted through the sage heading
west, and saw a number more left behind. About 40 then flew up and away
towards the north.

Neither Fred nor I could remember seeing or hearing about flocks that large.
Has anyone?

Rest of the day was pretty uneventful, mostly because strong winds. Scared up
some sage sparrows and one sage thrasher, caught a very brief glance at what
I'm pretty sure was a loggerhead shrike (where highway emerges from the
Columbia River heading east, black mask went all the way across the top of the
bill below the eyes, visible as it perched looking directly at us, in clear
contrast to northern shrike I saw a couple days earlier at Kent Ponds), one
rough-legged hawk, a number of Say's phoebes (plus Fred has had one outside
his office in Everett the past week), many kestrel and harriers, two great-
horned owls where Diann MacRae reported (one on nest, other flew in as we
watched), three bald eagles (two adult, one imm) flying up the valley
generally northeast from the Old Vantage Highway at milepost 11, lots of red-
tails and meadowlarks.

Eric Stahlfeld