In response to the postings about lack of migrants I'd like to add our
experience with the North Central Audubon birdathon on Saturday May 10,
which was also International Migratory Bird Day, and promoted by folks in
Leavenworth as the weekend of the BirdFest -- with a fine line-up of bird
walks and other activities. Birdathon participants had to bird on Saturday
within the drainage of the Wenatchee River.

We covered the Leavenworth--Plain--Lake Wenatchee area, in pleasant
shirtsleeve weather in the 60s that brought a brief afternoon shower around
3 pm. Leavenworth is about 1600 feet and Lake Wenatchee is at about 1860
feet elevation. We started birding at 6 am and finished at the mandated
hour of 5 pm.

We finished with only 52 species, finding entire groups of birds absent:
a.. Good numbers of Tree and Violet-green Swallows, a few Northern
Roughwinged, but no Bank, no Barn, no Cliff Swallows, and no swifts.
b.. The flycatchers -- save for one Western Wood Pewee -- were completely
absent, no Olive-sided, no empids, no phoebes, no kingbirds.
c.. The thrushes were absent, save for the Western Bluebird and the
American Robin.
d.. No tanagers or orioles.
e.. No vireos.
f.. The warblers were mixed -- good numbers of Yellow-rumped and
Nashvilles (actually, a bumper crop of Nashvilles) -- but the numbers of all
the others were way down -- only 1 Orange-crowned, 1 Yellow, 1 Townsend's,
and 1 Common Yellowthroat.
By midafternoon we had to admit that spring was not far advanced in our
area -- near Lake Wenatchee some wooded areas clearly had been under snow
cover until very recently--and the White River drainage -- which I
remembered as a pretty good area for songbirds -- was an eery place empty of
birdsong. We decided that we probably should head down to lower elevations,
to Cashmir and Wenatchee to try to find some thrushes, vireos, tanagers,
orioles and other birds that hadn't reached our area yet, but we were around
an hour's drive from Wenatchee Confluence Park, our best bet at that hour.
So we made the best of it and finished up around Fish Lake and Plain.

Now, about the lack of migrants. First, some migrants -- the Yellow-rumped
and Nashville warblers, for example, clearly had arrived on schedule, while
the others lagged behind. We've never had trouble finding lots of the
standard warblers in this area. Were we just too early this year? Second, I
found four Clark's Nutcrackers in a large Douglas Fir on River Road in
Plain, elevation 1800 feet. I would have expected them -- even at this
early season -- to be at higher elevations where they had cached seeds last
summer. The tree they were in had a huge crop of cones. Had the Nutcrackers
exhausted their seed caches higher up? Did they just decide to act like
human snowbirds and take a break where the climate is more moderate? The
posting yesterday by Mike Denny about the Walla Walla delta mentioned: "no
vireos, tanagers, Empid flycatchers or hummingbirds." All that matches up
with our experience and with the laments about late migrants from the
western part of the state.

If we're still in an el Nino weather pattern, with cooler temperatures and
more moisture than in normal years we might expect late migrants. Like
everyone else I'm hoping and waiting for them to arrive.

Bird List:
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Mallard
Ring-necked Duck
Common Merganser
Turkey Vulture
Osprey (4 over Fish Lake, 1 near Lake Wenatchee, 1 in Plain)
Bald Eagle
Cooper's Hawk (2 over the Wenatchee River in Plain)
Red-tailed Hawk
Golden Eagle
California Quail
Killdeer (Seen 5/11)
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove
Rufous Hummingbird
Calliope Hummingbird (Seen 5/11)
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Western Wood Pewee
Steller's Jay
Clark's Nutcracker
American Crow
Common Raven (2 pairs doing close-formation flights over Natapoc Ridge)
Tree Swallow
Violet-green Swallow
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
Mountain Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
House Wren
Winter Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Western Bluebird
American Robin
European Starling
Orange-crowned Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Spotted Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Brewer's Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird (a treeful of these waiting for a poor robin to leave
her nest)
Cassin's Finch (seen 5/11)
House Finch
Pine Siskin
Evening Grosbeak
House Sparrow

Paul Webster
Seattle
paul.webster at attbi.com