If it all possible, I love to spend the first day of
May birding. IMHO, this is the perfect way to usher in
this glorious month.

Garrett MacDonald, Michael Woodruff and I concentrated
on birding southeastern Lincoln and southwestern
Spokane counties yesterday. Overall, the weather was
fair, with cool northeasterly breezes.

On the Lincoln side of Sprague Lake, we saw a nice,
alternate plumaged COMMON LOON (Lincoln county lifer),
WESTERN GREBE-2, CLARK'S GREBE-1, BLACK TERN -2,
CINNAMON TEAL, and quite a few BONAPARTE'S GULLs. The
Adams County part of the lake held another COMMON LOON
(Adams county lifer), flyover WOOD DUCKs (Adams Co.
lifer) - 2, BLUE-WINGED TEAL, GREATER SCAUP (Adams Co.
lifer)- 3, WHITE PELICAN - 3, CANVASBACK, and REDHEADs
among the more usual fare.

When we visited the cordial Corders (south of Cheney,
Spokane Co.), we met up with Ron Dexter, and Matthew &
Larry Moskwik. Craig walked us down to a nice vantage
point to view the LONG-EARED OWLs with young in the
nest. Nice!

After departing from the Corders, the Moskwiks and our
party stopped in at the Amber Lake section of
Columbian Trail State Park. There is some great
looking habitat near the parking lot, but it was
pretty slow at midday. There was an ORANGE-CROWNED
WARBLER, WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW - 2, and a HERMIT
THRUSH present in the thickets.

Michael, Garrett, and I continued to work the extreme
southwestern section of Spokane County for target
birds such as Swainson's Hawk, Brewer's Sparrow,
Long-billed Curlew, and Sage Thrasher. Since this area
contains extensive grasslands, scablands with
scattered brush and spotty sage, this area appears to
be the best bet for finding Great Basin type
specialties in the county.

After scoping down numerous Red-tails, we finally
found a light morph SWAINSON'S HAWK (Spokane Co.
lifer) on Mullinix Road about a 1 1/2 miles north of
the Whitman County line (DL Pg. 72, B3). A bit farther
down the road, we had great views of GRASSHOPPER
SPARROW on a fenceline. In addition, we found a BARN
OWL and a GREAT HORNED OWL in this sector of the
county.

Our final stop of the day, was the often exciting
Philleo Lake. After about ten minutes of scoping
through windows in the screen of Ponderosa Pines
branches, we found AMERICAN AVOCET - 2, and
BLACK-NECKED STILT - 3 on the southern half of the
lake. Both of these were Spokane County lifers for us.
In addition, there were BONAPARTE'S GULL -2, BLACK
TERN - 6, LESSER YELLOWLEGS - 3, and a distant
unidentified peep.

Overall, this season seems kind of slow or the
migration is delayed a bit this year. However, May Day
for turned out to be productive fun day for all of us.

Gina Sheridan
Spokane, WA

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