Tweeters,

This is a great report from Okanogan County
----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Kuehn
To: woody ; Philip Mattocks ; Andy Stepniewski
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 6:54 PM
Subject: Birding Spectacle!





Hi Guys,

I'm up on the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area, south of Loomis once again and besides the bald eagles on white tailed carcases, golden eagles circling overhead and seeing a bobcat pounce on a meadow vole and come up with a mouthful of grass, I saw a great spectacle today. I was just south of Blue Lake and saw a large flock of birds circle up and fly back to the ground. I was thinking finches or sparrows but got out the scope and saw their red caps in the sunlight. I estimated the flock at 2 or 3 thousand. After watching for about ten minutes, I decided I should see how close I could get to them, as they were about 200 yards away. They appeared to be feeding on mullein and something in the grass. It was really noisy and looked a lot like a grasshopper infestation with things flying in every direction and a big swarm going up only to circle around and land again. Anyway, this flock of common redpolls let me slowly walk right in the middle of it and sit down. They would all fly up, circle around and land, some less than 10 feet away. There would be 3 or 4 hundred on one red-osier dogwood or elderberry bush and maybe a thousand in a willow tree. After watching in awe for over an hour and getting some great views of the hoaries, I decided it had to be well over 5000 in the flock! I looked hard for gold finches, pine siskin etc, but it appeared to be all redpolls, with most males already in bright breeding plumage. The hoary males seemed almost white in comparison to the darker streaked commons. It was one of those things I just had to share with someone. I usually see flocks of 10 or 20, once while hunting in the Palouse I saw around 100. I was just passing it on to see if others had seen these huge flocks, which appeared to be heading back to Canada.

Cheers,

Doug Kuehn