=======================
July 28 '06

I guess my main mesage about Spruce Grouse in Whatcom County, near the Canadian border, is that I'm sure they're there, however sparsely. Someone ought to get famous by getting a photo of one. Wahl's recent book "Birds of Washington" (2005), shows that they're not found west of the Skagit River (Ross Lake).

The adult female I stumbled on in September, 1988, did not have any young with her. Failed breeder? A N. Goshawk (I concluded that was what it was) harshly scolded me when I stopped to rest at a mountain brook on the climb up the trail. Maybe that was the cause of failed breeding?

Phil Hotlen
Bellingham, WA
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Wayne C. Weber" <contopus at telus.net>
> Phil and Tweeters,
>
> Spruce Grouse are not included in Breeding Bird Survey trend analyses
> because they are so rarely recorded that meaningful population trend
> data cannot be calculated. This is true not only for Washington, but also
> for B.C., and even at the continental level. In Washington, I suspect
> that there are only one or two BBS routes, if any, that have ever recorded
> Spruce Grouse.
>
> The simple fact is that most of the breeding range of Spruce Grouse is
> too far north (or at too high altitudes) to be adequately sampled by
> the North American road network.
>
> There are many bird species (examples: Yellow-billed Loon, Black-bellied
> Plover, Sanderling, Hoary Redpoll, Harris's Sparrow) for which the BBS
> cannot be used to determine population trends, because there is little or
> no overlap between their breeding ranges and the area covered by the BBS.
> The BBS is also of little if any value in tracking population changes of
> colonial waterbirds, rare and localized species, and nocturnal species.
> For the scores of bird species that fall into these categories, other
> methods must be used to track population changes.
>
>
> Wayne C. Weber
> Delta, BC
> contopus at telus.net
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <vogelfreund at comcast.net>
> To: <Tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:03 PM
> Subject: [Tweeters] Spruce Grouse not in BBS?
>
>
> =====================
> 7/25/06
>
> To no one in particular:
>
> I'd like to know why Spruce Grouse is left out of the Breeding Bird Surveys.
> I almost flunked statistics in college, and tend to gloss over such results.
> But I like to look for presence or absence of selected species. And the
> ghostly presence of Spruce Grouse (=Franklin's Grouse) in the Cascade Mts.
> of the Canadian border region would interest me, if it were available.
>
> Phil Hotlen
> Bellingham, WA
> --------------------------------
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