Hi Tweeters and friends:
A group of us went to Othello for a meeting on Sun, Mar 5, mainly traveling
on highways, but managing a little birding. Hwy 26 to Othello is CLOSED
just past Vantage, so you have to take I-90 east from Vantage up the hill,
instead of going the usual way, and turn down a detour to get back to hwy
26. It turns out it is a project that started on Feb 22, and may last up to
6 weeks! Right now it has hwy 26 closed about 2 miles east of Vantage. The
link to WA Dept of Transportation's info about it is:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Regions/NorthCentral/projects/SR26/SandHollowCulvertRepair/
It was cloudy in E WA but there was no rain. It was dry over the pass.
We finally got onto hwy 26 after taking the long detour, and started seeing
SANDHILL CRANES flying west of Royal City at about 9:00am. There were about
100 cranes flying and landing in a field by L St, 6 miles west of Royal
City. As we headed east, we saw several hundred Sandhill Cranes near Corfu
road and hwy 26. We went down Corfu Rd looking for the Amer. Tree Sparrows
reported to be down there (by Randy Hill) in the field in piles of brush,
but didn't see any. As we came back up Corfu Rd, we saw our first GREAT
HORNED OWL of the trip. It was sitting in a stick nest quite high in a tree
in Corfu Woods, about 4 blocks into the woods. On the rest of the trip
there were maybe 40 or 50 American Kestrels along the way, several kinds of
ducks including one pair of Redheads at County Line Ponds, 6 Tundra Swans
and 7 Canvasbacks on the pond at Birder's Corner, a Say's Phoebe at Birder's
Corner, and Rough-legged Hawks near Ellensburg. On our trip we saw 3!!
different Great-horned Owls on the nest with their kitty ears sticking up.
The first was at Corfu woods in the morning. Later on our way back home
from Othello, we were driving north on Dodson Road, and the second owl was
in a small line of Russian Olive trees close to the left side of Dodson Rd
probably about 2 miles north of Birder's Corner. There are only about 8
trees or so there. Joyce Meyer said the first tree (farthest south) w/ a
bigger nest sometimes has an owl, but we didn't see it there. Then she
pointed out a small nest in a crook of a tree not too high up. It was in a
tree near the middle of the line of trees, and the nest was hard to see.
But we could see those cat ears. The third Great Horned Owl was in the
cottonwood trees
looking north as we were coming down I-90 from Ryegrass Summit (east of
Ellensburg). Farther west from there on I-90 there is a pond near the
highway by the
Kittitas Exit. The huge nest in the cottonwood tree had 2 Bald Eagles
sitting nearby on a limb. As we approached the west exit to Ellensburg
several swan species flew from the pond over the highway.
These meetings in E WA can be pretty great, if you can do a little birding
along the
way.
Yours, Carol Schulz
DesMoines
mail to: linusq at att.net