Hi Folks - Don Norman asked me to forward his message about what he saw on
his Breeding Bird Survey routes. Here 'tis.
Jon. Anderson - Olympia, Washington - festuca at olywa.net

----- Original Message -----
From: <Donorman at aol.com>
Jon-
I get highlites from the LABIRD tweeters BBS routes and thought I would
share mine if they get posted on Tweets. Perhaps you could post it for me.

Highlights of Taholah (June 4) and McChord/Fort Lewis (June 2) Breeding Bird
Survey (BBS) routes.

This is the 8th year running the Lakewood to 13th Division Prairie BBS route
and I was unable to locate a new bird to crack the 100 species barrier.
With 9/11 I had to make some circumabulations to backtrack to get onto the
Base, but all went well, and I had 66 species (average of the 12 times I
have run it = 66) and normal numbers of birds. Higher than normal species
include:
BHGR, SPTO, YWAR, RBNU and WWPE.
Misses (recorded > 50% of the counts) include: RTHA, BTPI, CORA and RECR. I
also saw no crossbills on the Taholah count, and have not seen them around
on other dates. No especially great birds, though there were 2
hammonds/dusky flycatchers singing at 2 stops. Could still be migrants.

This is the 10th year I have run the Taholah count north of Ocean Shores,
and typically, it started with drizzle, and continued off and on thru the
whole count. I do not have summary statsn yet for this count, they are
available on the web. There was little wind, for a change, making hearing
easier. I may have to re-run, since there was a lot of quiet due to the
drizzle after several gloriously sunny days. Birds off the sheet include
killdeer, red-throated loon (winter plumaged bird in Copalis River), brown
pelican (1 immat), and a marsh wren. It was so quiet I could hear across
the Copalis River and got a ring-necked pheasant. This is a really
difficult route because of wind and rain so often that counts for many
species are probably more impacted by weather than most counts. The
overcast weather probably reduced swallow and raptor movements. Winter wren
and SOSP numbers were normal, but SWTH and warblers were low.

The BBS has incredble info on the web at www.mp2-pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/

Please contact me if you would like to get more involved in the BBS.
don norman (donorman at aol.com)