Hello Hugh and birders,

You mention the amount of Species more we found do to the real corporation
of all the birders we had on our trip.We did not produced all the target
birds what we had in mind including for all the Sharp-tailed Grouse and the
Long-eared Owls.It is really hard to get all the birds what you know been
seeing there.Two birders of our group parted early on the evening Saturday
to go and seeing the Great Gray Owls.There stopped on the Sharp-tailed
Grouse spot before leaving for Walla Walla and seeing seven Sharp- tailed
Grouse flying in,so as we looked four times to get this birds least two
birders was lucky to get this birds on to there list.birding with a group is
also different than birding alone and you want that all parties seeing the
birds.I know that you led this trip many years to the Plateau and it is
different every year.We are so grateful to you that you give us the spot
where you saw the YELLOW BILLED LOON.I must also say about our group of
birders.all was on time all had good warm clothing for the cold weather all
had a scope what made it also easy and less time on the birds and most of
all birders was so eager to see all the birds
Of me the highlight of the trip was to see the two Saw-whet Owl so long and
so good and close eye level.Patrick had to do only few calls (by mouth )and
this birds called back shortly after.I been going for this birds many time
in the canyon there but never had the birds in flash light.Since I have many
photos of this species,I did not take any photos since the road was very Icy
and it was dark to see where you can safely walk with out falling what I did
on Friday night.


Cheers Ruth Sullivan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugh Jennings" <hughbirder at earthlink.net>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 11:31 AM
Subject: Columbia River & Waterville Plateau


This is a report on the East L. WA Audubon field trip this past weekend.
Ruth Sullivan gave such an excellent report on their trip that I will just
supplement it with some of our observations. We left Kirkland at 8 a.m. Sat
with 8 people and then waited to meet two others at Wenatchee, so we didn't
get started birding until after 11 a.m. We followed the east side of the
Columbia R. up to Chelan where we found the YELLOW-BILLED LOON at the
riverfront walk park. That was the only location where we saw Northern
Shoveler. We continued up the west side to Pateros. The mouth of the Methow
R. had thousands of ducks of many species. We especially enjoyed the Redhead
ducks and many Canvasbacks. We usually drive up to Twisp, but because of the
late start we only got to Alta L. SP. We stayed at Pateros overnight where I
got a chance to talk to Patrick early Sun. morning. We continued north to
Brewster and then east via Grange Road to Bridgeport. Grange Road is where
we saw 7-8 American Tree Sparrows which were life birds for some of our
group. It was there we saw our only Northern Harrier of the trip. We
continued south on hwy 17, then west on hwy 172. We also enjoyed some large
flocks of Snow Buntings perched on wires east of Mansfield and Horned Larks
were everywhere, but we didn't see any Lapland Longspurs. The Great Horned
Owl was at its usual place in the grove of trees a few miles west of
Mansfield. We saw about 8 Rough-legged Hawks on this stretch of hwy. We
really enjoyed these beautiful raptors. At Withrow we saw one female
Ring-necked Pheasant in town and 7-8 Gray Partridge back behind some of
grain silos. It was good trip in dry, but cold weather. Our group ended up
with 58 species for 1-1/2 days, so didn't do near as well as Ruth.

Hugh Jennings
Bellevue, WA
hughbirder at earthlink.net