Hi tweets,
Charlie Wright, Carol Schulz and I birded from Ellensburg to the potholes today. Our first goodies came along the hungzinger/wanapum road. At the Black-throated Sparrow spot, we encountered a calling Black-throated sparrow and a rather large flock of migrating sparrows. The most impressive of these numbers was about 30 Sage Sparrows, both adults and juveniles; there were several Lark Sparrows and a Brewer's Sparrow also in this flock.

Even a bigger surprise was at the railroad bridge further down the road. Two falcons were circling over the cliffs to the west of the road, you would think prairie right; well so did we. Nope. Two circling and alarm calling adult Peregrine Falcons!

Off to grant county for some shorebirding, with a quick stop at the patch of trees at Corfu road along Hwy.26. Pretty quiet, but lots of butterflies about, including at least one Monarch Butterfly, plus lots of blues, sulphurs and cabbage whites. We heard a warbler chip here about 6-7 times, that best matches a chip note of a Black-throated Blue Warbler but the bird could not
be found. If anybody is down at the location tomorrow, it might be useful to check this out.

Next stop at the county line ponds along Hwy.26. Numbers are as follows:
3 Baird's sandpiper
2 Semipalmated Sandpiper
40 Western Sandpiper
11 Least Sandpiper
4 Lesser Yellowlegs
Black-necked Stilt and american Avocet were also present .

The Potato ponds just south of the Para Ponds was our next stop.... jackpot!
The following are conservative numbers if you can believe it...

45 Wilson's Phalarope
75 Red-necked Phalarope
11 Baird's Sandpiper
3 Solitary Sandpiper
4 Spotted Sandpiper
3 Pectoral Sandpiper
75 Western Sandpiper
25 Least Sandpiper
19 Semipalmated Sandpier, most of these were juv. males making it a much easier ID that is often the case, if you can believe it still this is likely a conservative estimate as no "close calls" were included in this count.
1 Short-billed Dowitcher
15 Long-billed Dowitcher
3 Greater Yellowlegs
2 Lesser Yellowlegs
Our next stop was the M-street access at Lind Coulee
A few nice things here too.

2 Semipalmated Plover
10 Baird's Sandpiper
11 Lesser Yellowlegs
2 Greater Yellowlegs
4 Long-billed Dowitcher
15 Least Sandpiper
10 Western Sandpiper
And a huge flocking of California and Ring-billed Gull over the coulee about
40 in total.

A last stop in late evening along Dodson and Frenchman hills rd found large amounts of swallows, mostly Bank Swallows staging in numbers at numbers of 3-400 in each of two different spots. There were two adult Burrowing Owls at the man-made nest site burrow along Frenchman Hills road.

In total we tallied 106 species for the day, about 100 in Kittitas and Grant counties. Not a bad day.

Scott Downes