Natalie and I ventured out over the last weekend on our first birding
trip in a month after spending the last few weeks putting finishing
touches on our book. I'm not sure we picked the best weekend to venture
to Eastern Washington, due to heat in the mid to upper 90s Saturday and
Sunday, but we still managed to see some good birds and to visit a few of
our favorite birding spots. In all we saw 82 species - 60 on Saturday
alone - and along the way we also viewed a wide variety of dragonflies,
butterflies, and mammals.

The route Saturday was simple - drive east on I-90 for late afternoon and
evening birding at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge near Cheney and then
find a hotel room before doing more Spokane area birding Sunday. The
first part of the equation worked out great. We saw Brewer's and Lark
Sparrows, as well as a 12-spotted Skimmer dragonfly, at Ryegrass Pass
before reaching Vantage. We added sightings of Swainson's Hawk, a Prairie
Falcon stooping just south of the highway and a Golden Eagle near the
Potholes Wildlife Area before our late afternoon arrival at Turnbull.

We enjoyed good birding at Turnbull, despite the heat, as we watched
Black Terns and young ducks and coots in the ponds near the entrance to
the refuge. We also had a great view of a Sora preening in the open
along the side of Cheever Lake.

After a bit of an adventure trying to find a hotel room Saturday night -
Spokane was booked and I think we ended up getting the last room in
Ritzville as we drove west in search of a place to spend the night - we
started birding along the road south from Ritzville toward Washtucna. Our
pleasant surprise was viewing a small Bank Swallow colony near the tiny
town of Ralston, and also in Ralston we had a great look at a white-lined
sphinx moth hovering and feeding on flowers like a hummingbird at a small
park.

We gradually picked our way west through Lind and stopped at Lind Coulee,
where shorebirds were not easy to find but we did watch a Clark's Grebe
diving along the opposite shore from our viewpoint near M Road. We
veered south through Marsh Unit 1 of the Columbia National Wildlife
Refuge, where we happened upon our first real collection of shorebirds
for the weekend - Greater Yellowlegs calling with their distinctive tu-
tu-tu calls, a Lesser Yellowlegs and a Spotted Sandpiper, with a Canyon
Wren singing in the 90-plus degree noontime heat behind us. A stop at the
Para Ponds near Othello added Black-necked Stilt and a flock of more than
40 American White Pelicans, and more stilts along with American Avocets
and their young were seen a short while later at the County Line Ponds
along Highway 26 west of Othello.

A hot sprinkling of rain fell as we birded down Red Rock Coulee and along
Lower Crab Creek Sunday afternoon. We didn't see anything out of the
ordinary, but it was still good to find at least one Loggerhead Shrike
hunting in the sage along the sides of the gravel road.

A pair of Western Grebe diving in the Columbia River south of the Wanapum
Dam capped our weekend birding, as we were too worn out from the heat to
bird along the rest of the route home to Tacoma. As always, no matter
whether it was too hot or too cold, Eastern Washington offered a great
birding excursion yet again. It's just too bad that Spokane and most
other towns between Snoqualmie Pass and the Idaho border were too jam
packed with concert goers and motorcycle rally fans to make room for the
watchable wildlife dollars from a pair of hot and weary bird watchers.
I'm sure the eastside will be ready for more of our money when the summer
crazy season is over.

Happy birding!

--
Rob McNair-Huff ---------- Tacoma, WA
Author of Birding Washington (Falcon Publishing, 2004)
and Insider's Guide to the Olympic Peninsula (Globe Pequot, 2001)
White Rabbit Publishing ---- http://www.whiterabbits.com
Mac Net Journal ---------- http://www.macnetjournal.com
The Equinox Project ------ http://www.whiterabbits.com/weblog.html