Tweets - I don't have the final tallies yet, as I left without one of the
tally sheets, but last Thursday we had a pretty successful trial run of my
proposed Cle Elum CBC, and we've decided to make it official next year.

We had 18 people (14 from western Washington, 3 from Cle Elum, and 1 from
Yakima) participating in the count, plus we had two feeder reports.

I'd divided people into 5 groups each doing a different sector: Cle
Elum-Swauk Prairie, Hidden Valley-Liberty; Teanaway, South Cle Elum-Upper
Peoh Point Rd, and the Southeast sector which included SR-10, Elk Heights,
and more sites southeast of Cle Elum.

Despite very cold temperatures on the count day (and for the week+ leading
up to the count day), the weather was otherwise quite nice. There was about
6-8 inches of old snow on the ground, but the roads were cleared or at least
plowed for the most part. We had sun at the higher elevations with fog or
clouds below, and little wind.

In all, we managed 63 species - not a huge number, but I think the extended
cold had a lot to do with that. We missed a bunch of species that I've had
in Cle Elum in the winter; I've not heard of *any* sightings of the
specialty birds (Bohemian Waxwing, Pine Grosbeak, Common Redpoll) that
sometimes turn up there. I'm sure in future years we will have a higher
count.

We managed somewhere around 3300 total birds.

Highlights included:
165 Wild Turkey
27 Rough Legged Hawk
1 unidentified large falcon up the Teanaway
2 White-headed Woodpecker at Swauk Cemetary
1 WESTERN SCRUB-JAY towards the west end of Lambert Rd. at a feeder
7 Bushtit north of Elk Heights

Owling yielded:
1 Western Screech-Owl
2 Great Horned Owl
1 Northern Saw-whet Owl

All in all, I think everyone had a good time and thought it was a good
count.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== birdmarymoor at verizon.net