Subject: RFI: Birding guides to Washington
Date: Jun 14 14:26:14 2000
From: CKempfOldenburg at aol.com - CKempfOldenburg at aol.com
Hi all,
We'll be birding in the Pacifc NW in late July/early August.
That's obviously not the best time of the year, especially not
for passerines, but still, it's going to be interesting ...:)
What we'd like to know is whether are there any new birding
guides to Washington We've got two guides for Washington
(Wahl/Paulson 1991, MacRae 1995). We mainly used Wahl/
Paulson last summer, mainly because we preferred the maps
over those in Diann MacRae's guide, but we found it wasn't
quite up-to-date for some of the areas we visited. The area
we're most interested in this summer is the Columbia Basin,
for instance the area around Moses Lake. Is the information
given in the two guides we've got sufficient to find the major
birding sites, or do we need some more detailed information?
Second question (although I may come back for more ...<grin>):
We haven't got any target species on this trip, but we've been
wondering how good the chances are of getting some decent
looks at hummingbirds at that time of the year. They're a
fascinating group, and last year we only managed to get a couple
of observations (and only managed to identify one bird, a Rufous).
And are there any places where we have a reasonable chance
of getting Burrowing Owls at that time of the year?
Hermann Oldenburg
Hannover/Germany
ckempfoldenburg at aol.com