On Tuesday (August 1, 2006), Matthew Moskwik, Michael
Woodruff, and I took advantage of a beautiful summer
day and birded Pend Oreille County. Our hopes were to
find unusual birds that might stray into the county
via post-breeding dispersal.

An early find of the day was juvenile LEAST FLYCATCHER
on the grade of Kirkpatrick Road. In small numbers,
this species probably breeds annually in P.O. County.

As a more exciting find, we were greeted by a pair of
ROCK WRENS at the pull-out above Lake of the Woods.
One of the birds was carrying food and it made us
wonder if they could have been breeding here.
Apparently, this sighting of Rock Wren is the first
county record for
Pend Oreille County.


Some of the other birds that we saw in the southern
end of the county that we saw were YELLOW WARBLER,
CASSIN'S VIREO, RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD, BLACK-CHINNED
HUMMINGBIRD, RED CROSSBILL, PINE SISKIN, WESTERN
BLUEBIRD, SAVANNAH SPARROW, C. YELLOWHROAT, VAUX'S
SWIF, and numerous MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRDs and CHIPPING
SPARROWs.

Traveling up east side of the P.O. River, we
encountered some decent looking habitat, but not much
in the way of shorebirds. Reservation Marsh had a
responsive SORA that was well seen, and we heard
VIRGINIA RAILs calling. The River Bend Marsh held two
BAIRD'S SANDPIPERs.

Our best shorebirding site was along the river flats
on the Flying Goose Ranch. This is where we saw
SEMIPALMATED PLOVER - 5 (county lifer for all of us),
BAIRD'S SANDPIPER -2 (county lifer for Michael and
I), LEAST SANDPIPER - 7, Spotted Sandpiper and
Killdeer.

When we checked out the cut over woods north of Usk
where Terry Little had previously found a Lewis's
Woodpecker, we were fortunate to find a pair of these
marvelous birds. In fact, we found an active nest
(with calling young) of LEWIS'S WOODPECKERS. The tree
in question is the last Ponderosa Pine tree on the
left (with a yellow No Trespassing sign) before one
enters the Cusick Bobolink Meadows . This was yet
another county lifer for Michael and I.

Other than a plethora of WHITE PELICANs, Calispell
Lake didn't hold anything unusual. However, we saw a
bright colored NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH on Calispell
Creek. The river crossing on McKenzie Meadows had over
a dozen GREATER YELLOWLEGS and one LESSER YELLOWLEGS.
One WESTERN KINGBIRD was north of Cusick.

One of the big highlights of the day was the spectacle
of a large number of gregarious BOBOLINKs on the west
end of Beaman Road (McKenzie Meadows). Most of the
birds were females and immatures, but there were a
couple of adult males in molt. At least 120 Bobolinks
were covering small Hawthorn shrubs and packed
together on fencerows.

After dropping off Mattew in Elk, Michael and I
checked Peone Prairie (Spokane County). Although we
saw three LB Dowitchers and a Greater Yellowlegs,
there weren't any peeps present.

We ended a superb day of birding in Pend Oreille
County with four county lifers for myself, 16 for
Michael, and two for Matthew. We recorded 100 species
for the day in P.O. county without birding the
highlands and with little forest birding.

Gina Sheridan
Spokane, WA

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