Tweeters,

I have a tidewater Rock Wren record in Washington that I probably
haven't reported previously: one seen in beach logs at West Beach in
Deception Pass State Park, Island County, on May 6, 1995.

In southwestern British Columbia, there are a number of Rock Wren
records along saltwater shorelines, although there is only one
breeding record west of the Cascades (near Duncan, Vancouver I., in
1970). Not all of the sightings in southwestern B.C. are coastal by a
long shot, however.

Some of the shoreline records are as follows:

One on a rock jetty at the tip of Point Grey, Vancouver, seen by many
observers from 29 November 1988 to 18 March 1989;

One on the West Vancouver shoreline, seen on 24 December 1977 by Derek
Sutton;

One at Wilson Creek, near Sechelt, on 10 May 1987;

One on Denman Island, 19-20 September 1964 (reported in "Audubon Field
Notes");

One at Sooke, west of Victoria, on 1 November 1969 (specimen);

One at Rocky Point, Metchosin (near Victoria) on 20 September 1990;

One at Cape Lazo on 19 November 1932 (specimen);

One at Crescent Beach, Surrey sometime in the 1990s (can't find the
date-- can somebody help me here?)

There are several other records from the Victoria area which may have
been shoreline records, but it's hard to tell from the details given.
Others were definitely not on shorelines-- e.g. birds seen on top of
Mount Douglas in Saanich and Mount Tuam on Salt Spring Island. (V.I.
birders, if you can provide further details on shoreline records, I'd
be interested!)

Some of these records are from my sighting files, others from "The
Birds of B.C." by Wayne Campbell et al.

In short-- ROCK WREN sightings are very rare in western Washington and
southwestern BC, but they can pop up almost anywhere, and when they
do, are likely to be in rocks or beach logs along a shoreline.

Wayne C. Weber
Kamloops and Delta, BC
contopus at shaw.ca



----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Atkinson <scottratkinson at hotmail.com>
To: <JATLMM at msn.com>; <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 8:10 AM
Subject: Re: rock wren


W Wash wintering Rock Wrens at the beach:

Very rare. A bird was found by Paulson et al on the Sequim-Dungeness
CBC back in '83 on Protection I., not far from Marrowstone. The
Padilla Bay CBC (on its "big day" of 139 sp.) also had one back in
'93, on n. Whidbey I., near Cornet Bay if I recall correctly. I'm
not certain but there could be older historic records (1 or 2) in
Jewett from dry beach/driftwood habitat from Puget Sound islands in
winter (I vaguely recall an Ediz Hook record,
but that might have been in migration).

There are more records for shore/beach habitat in fall (Sept-Oct
mostly), as from San Juan and King counties, but from other sites as
well (but still quite rare in this season). Of course, there are more
records for late spring and summer in w WA, these birds more often
occurring in uplands and especially montane areas. Skagit County, for
example, has four records that I'm aware of, all June-July and in the
remote eastern sections, at middle to upper elevations.

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
email: scottratkinson at hotmail.com

From: "JATLMM" <JATLMM at msn.com>
Reply-To: JATLMM at msn.com
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: rock wren
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 22:08:28 -0800

What else could it be? Today at Fort Flagler (on Marrowstone Island,
on the spit leading to Rat Island), my husband and I saw a wren that
was not a winter wren or a Bewick's wren or a marsh wren. We concluded
that it must be a house wren (which we've never identified), although
it didn't really look like that either. When we got home we looked in
Stoke's, and the bird we saw could have posed for the rock wren
photographed there. Any other sightings
in western Wash.?

Janine Anderson
Seattle, WA
mail to: JATLMM at msn.com