Hi Tweets,

On Saturday, January 24th, I stopped in Woodland WA in Cowlitz, County on
the way to Portland. My hope was to find the Clay-colored Sparrow that
Mike Denny had seen last weekend, but I ended up finding a 1st Winter
Harris's Sparrow instead - a very pleasant surprise.

The bird was at the end of Roberson Road, off of Whalen Road in blackberry
brambles,by small slough. Whalen road is shown in both the Delorme and the
new, A Birder's Guide to Washington. There is very little shoulder on
which to park, but it is near the end of the dead end road, so traffic was
not an issue. I also spoke with the woman who owns the property and
explained what I was up to. She was amazed that I was staring at sparrows,
but talked for quite awhile about the cranes and geese that are found on
their property.

The bird was in a large flock of about 20 White-crowned Sparrows and 10
Golden-crowned Sparrows.

As a bonus is the large SANDHILL CRANE flight that happens just after
4:00pm. I counted 500 of them flying south over me toward Ridgefield or
Sauvie Island. I had tried to find them earlier in the afternoon and I
could hear them, but they were in a field not viewable from the dike road.
On my return home Sunday, I stopped in at the same time and saw a similar
flight of Sandhills - always magical.

If you go after sparrows, there was another flock of Zonotrichia sparrows
half way between Roberson Road and the dike where the road crosses a small
stream that would be worth checking again.

Good Birding,

Marcus Roening
Tacoma, WA
marcus.d.roening at gsk.com