Subject: NW Whitman County 6/6
Date: Jun 6 18:53:10 2004
From: Scott Downes - downess at charter.net


The "on the way home" field trip today for WOS, covering much of the same
route as Friday and Saturday's trip in NW Whitman County saw mostly success,
despite being hampered by the wind, thus making low numbers of many species
and a few misses. For the day we totaled 82 species.
Some notables included:
1 very worn adult Ferruginous Hawk flying over Sheep Lake
The Clay-colored Sparrow which has been hanging out in the big sage stand
sang briefly (3-4 times) and was heard over the wind by a few people, it was
not seen.
The most comic, and perhaps the best birds of the day was our second to last
stop, at Sprague Lake overlooking the island. I was reading off the trip
list and had come to gulls, roughly my words were "So Ring-billed and
California gulls, nobody saw other species like Bonapartes or Franklin's?".
Well no sooner had I said that than a Franklin's Gull decided to fly into
view and joined another one already on the water. I guess the didnt want to
be left out! One of the Franklin's had a very heavy pink wash to the breast.
As a final highlight and while not rare was a very pleasing sight of two
families of Avocet chicks at Sheep Lake, enjoyed by all.

Hope everybody else on trips today had good sightings and the wind didnt
hamper results too much.

Scott Downes
Yakima WA