Birders,

Todd Heakes and I spent the morning of Saturday, Jan. 20 driving
Rosehill, Long Lake, Goose Lake, and Lac Le Jeune Roads just south of
Kamloops in search of owls and Sharp-tailed Grouse. We found the
grouse, but bombed on the owls.

A run up Long Lake Road south of Knutsford produced a flock of 14
SHARP-TAILED GROUSE in a birch thicket east of the road at km 3.8--
next to the egg farm. We had close views of several as they fed on the
buds in the trees. This is the same group that was seen in this area
by Mike Toochin, Ken Klimko and John Kalman about 2 weeks earlier, and
by Louise Rice about a week earlier. However, it's my first sighting
of Sharp-tails in about 2 years.

A circuit of Rosehill and Deleeuw Roads in search of the legendary
SNOWY OWL failed to locate that bird, but we did have close looks at a
flock of 40 SNOW BUNTINGS feeding by the roadside about 1 km east of
the Rosehill-Deleeuw Road junction. They eventually took off, and
later we saw another 15 SNOW BUNTINGS, probably part of the same
group, about 0.5 km west of that junction.

The Goose Lake Road, which we drove as a shortcut to get to the Lac Le
Jeune Road, site of the 2 NORTHERN HAWK OWLS, produced only 5 species,
none of them unusual. There was no sign of the Hawk Owls near the
Jocko Creek Ranch where they had been seen earlier. However, as I
reported earlier, Todd saw one of the owls a few days later on Highway
5 near the Inks Lake exit, 2-3 miles due west of the locality on the
Lac Le Jeune Road.

We drove farther up the Lac Le Jeune Road as far as Stake Lake, and
saw two GRAY JAYS on the way. Otherwise, all we could find along the
road were COMMON RAVENS and BLACK-BILLED MAGPIES, until we got to the
Ironmask Trailer Park on the outskirts of Kamloops. A small
concentration of birds near a feeder here included 2 CLARK'S
NUTCRACKERS, 3 MOUNTAIN CHICKADEES, one SLATE-COLOURED and 3 OREGON
JUNCOS, one SONG SPARROW, and 5 HOUSE FINCHES. Our last noteworthy
sighting was about 40 BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS in shrubbery at the Esso
Terminal, only 1 km from where the Lac Le Jeune Road joins Highway 1.

Sorry about the late report-- I switched E-mail addresses a few days
ago, and have had some major problems getting my E-mail to work at my
new address. It seems to be OK now.

Wayne Weber
Kamloops, BC
contopus at home.com