Subject: Centralia to Vancouver Lake birding
Date: Jan 31 18:47:15 2004
From: Ruth Sullivan - godwit at worldnet.att.net


Hello Tweets,

Today my mother and I headed south and birded our way to the Vancouver Lake in Clark Co. area with several stops made in between from several locations. We began the day in the Chehalis area in Lewis Co. along 13th Street at Stan Edwall Park,where we located a fairly large gull flock foraging in a portion of a recently flooded field that contained a few good notable gulls species, 1 Northern Harrier and a single Greater Yellowlegs. Gull highlights(amongst the flock of Glaucous-winged Gulls)at this location included the following:

5 Herring Gulls
3 Thayer's Gulls
2 Western Gulls

We traveled south encountering scattered rain showers the entire way to the Vancouver Lake area and nearly the entire way home back to Tacoma. We arrived along Lower River Rd. at 12pm,where the immature Harris' Sparrow was immediately located amongst a fairly large sparrow flock ,which was at the same location previously reported by Mark Miller,etc. The bird moved around somewhat from bramble patch to bramble patch,but stayed fairly close to both Golden and White-crowned Sparrows. We remained until 1pm at this location,where a few additional species of note were encountered including 1 adult Cooper's Hawk and 2 adult White-throated Sparrows. Continuing north of Fruit Valley Rd. traveling the back way to the town of Ridgefield we noted a single Red-breasted Sapsucker south of the town of Ridgefield. At Woodland we birded the Dike Access Rd. complex and noted a few highlights including a single Am.Tree Sparrow, 1 adult White-throated Sparrow and up to 40 Savannah Sparrows amongst other sparrows along a ditch/canal at the west end of Caples Rd. This location seems to be very productive for sparrows in general,especially good numbers of wintering Savannah Sparrows. Other notable species encountered from the Dike Access Rd. complex during our visit between 2pm-2:40pm including the following:

2 Great Egrets
1 adult Cooper's Hawk
1 adult Rough-legged Hawk
7 Am.Kestrels
400+ Sandhill Cranes
1 Herring Gull

Mammal species of note during the day included the following:

3 River Otters at Fort Borst Park in Centralia,Lewis Co.
2 River Otters at Kress Lake north of Kalama,Cowlitz Co.


Good birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
godwit at worldnet.att.net