In October of 1978 we encountered a flock of a hundred Mountain Bluebirds at
Windy Pass on the NE flank of Mount Saint Helens.
John & Loraine Allinger
Finn Hill Crusher Road
Hockinson, Clark Co., WA, US
-----Original Message-----
From: StahlfeldE at aol.com <StahlfeldE at aol.com>
To: fredbird at halcyon.com <fredbird at halcyon.com>; tweeters at u.washington.edu
<tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, March 29, 1999 1:25 PM
Subject: Mountain Bluebird flock on Old Vantage Hwy


>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
>