Hey tweets, I know many of us try to combine business trips with birding,
but often the result is like taking your husband into a fabric store. You
know you're having fun, but at the same time, you feel guilty because time's
a-wastin' (your hubby's toe is a-tappin') and you need to leave, *right now*
or there will be a spousal implosion.

Such was my fate yesterday, when my physicist husband took it into his head
to travel to the LIGO facility at Hanford Reach to talk to the other
physicists there about quantum engineering. The LIGO people have been
working for decades on detecting a gravity wave from deep space. They
started by inventing a detector that is nothing more than a big chunk of
solid aluminum with various motion detectors glued on top. They have
progressed to using two immensely long tubes of who-knows-what stretching
for hundreds of yards in two directions out into the desert, matched by a
similar array in Louisiana, of all places.

For those of us who are clueless about physics, the engineers have put up a
colorful set of posters in the lobby of their visitors building. The posters
purport to explain what LIGO is all about, but the engineers have vastly
overestimated my ability to process information involving mathematical
equations, incomprehensible diagrams and a photo of Einstein riding a
bicycle.

We arrived at the site in the late afternoon, just in time to join the last
walking tour of the day. My husband was thrilled, but I was hot hot hot. So
I elected to stay behind and sit in the meager shade, watching the few
starlings, western meadowlarks, Cassin's finches and barn swallows pant in
the heat. The finches were so pooped they didn't even object when one of the
little kids on the walking tour poked his head in a low tree and discovered
a finch nest with six eggs in it. You could almost hear the mother finch,
who was perched in the only shade to be found for a hundred square miles,
mutter, "Whatever." I sympathized. John was gone for two and a half hours.
The mother finch and I had plenty of time to make friends, gossip about
absent-minded husbands whose enthusiasms sometimes overwhelmed common sense,
complain about kids, the weather, the high cost of raising a family, etc.
It's always great to make new friends, don't you think? Also great to
realize that you are hallucinating and perhaps it's time to get a drink.

On the plus side, John and I had a great time birding our way to and from
Hanford. On the way over, we took the Yakima Canyon route and had a great
time at Umptanum camp site. Although this is a place that is probably better
to visit on a weekday, when the beer-drinking campers are probably fewer,
it's so thick with birds that you soon forget how much you'd rather belong
to a bovine species than a pongipoidal one. Notable sightings included a
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT (oblivious, for once, to birders getting good looks),
BULLOCK'S ORIOLES, BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAKS, YELLOW WARBLER, EASTERN KINGBIRD,
SONG SPARROW, SPOTTED TOWHEE, YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS, and CEDAR WAXWINGS.

Other good sites we hit:
Roslyn (OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER, STELLER'S JAY, WILSON'S WARBLER, CHIPPING
SPARROW, GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET, RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, NORTHERN FLICKER,
CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD, WESTERN TANAGER, MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE)

L.T. Murray reserve (TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE - great looks), WESTERN BLUEBIRD,
TURKEY VULTURE, MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD)

Moxee Agricultural Station (COMMON NIGHTHAWK)

Highway 240 at Mile 15 milepost (BURROWING OWL)

Here is a complete list of what we found on our trip:

Great blue heron
Turkey vulture
Canada goose
Wilson's snipe
Osprey
Bald eagle
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
California quail
American coot
Killdeer
Glaucous-winged gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Burrowing owl
Common nighthawk
Vaux's swift
Calliope hummingbird
Northern flicker
Olive-sided flycatcher
Western kingbird
Eastern kingbird
Steller's jay
Black-billed magpie
American crow
Common raven
Horned lark
Tree swallow
Violet-green swallow
North rough-winged swallow
Bank swallow
Cliff swallow
Barn swallow
Mountain chickadee
Red-breasted nuthatch
Golden-crowned kinglet
Western bluebird
Mountain bluebird
Townsend's solitaire
American robin
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Yellow warbler
Wilson's warbler
Yellow-breasted chat
Western tanager
Black-headed grosbeak
spotted towhee
Chipping sparrow
Song sparrow
White-crowned sparrow
Dark-eyed junco
Red-winged blackbird
Yellow-headed blackbird
Brewer's blackbird
Western meadowlark
Brown-headed cowbird
Cassin's finch
American goldfinch
House sparrow

- Connie, Seattle
csidles at isomedia.com