Hello, tweeters.

Netta and I hit the Columbia Basin this weekend to see what we could
find. The weather was pretty good most of the weekend, although we
had sleet Saturday afternoon in northern Grant County.

No surprising birds except:

Long-billed Curlew - one on Lower Crab Creek Road east of Corfu on 19
March.

Western Kingbird - one west of Potholes State Park on hwy 262 on 18
March; this seems extremely early to me.

Raptors were much in evidence, especially male harriers doing display
flights everywhere. Lots of kestrels also, and we saw at least 4
capture voles, which must be common this year.

There are some real differences in phenology between the lower part
of the Columbia Basin (central Grant Co. south) and the upper part
(northern Grant and Douglas counties) that we visited. Meadowlarks,
kestrels, and Mourning Doves were quite scarce in the upper part,
quite common in the lower part, and I suspect they just haven't moved
into the more northerly, higher elevation, cooler areas yet.

The other thing that interested me greatly was how uncommon dabbling
ducks were compared with diving ducks. There were thousands of the
latter (Common Goldeneyes, Lesser Scaups, Buffleheads, and Common
Mergansers the most abundant) on the Grand Coulee Lakes, and scarcely
any dabblers. I guess there is a real difference in migration
schedule between these two ecological types.

We really enjoyed all the mammals that are out in early spring. We
found a large colony of Washington Ground Squirrels on Lower Crab
Creek Road east of Corfu. They were common right along the road (even
had some burrow openings in the road), but that was the only place we
saw them. This species has become quite restricted in range in the
state. It is a tiny spotted ground squirrel that occurs east of the
Columbia River, where it replaces the unspotted Piute Ground Squirrel
that is found only west of the river. The latter is much more common
(and seems tamer, we discovered today). The Townsend's Ground
Squirrel (Spermophilus townsendi), on many lists of Washington
mammals, was divided into three species on the basis of chromosome
morphology, and the Washington representative of the complex is the
Piute Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus mollis). Brian, the ground
squirrel you saw west of Ellensburg was probably a California Ground
Squirrel, as you described it as "large."

The other especially interesting mammal we saw was a White-tailed
Jackrabbit, unfortunately a road kill, about 5 miles east of
Ellensburg on the Old Vantage Highway. I hadn't seen this species in
the state for three decades, and it is another grassland species that
has become very much less common than it used to be. In fact, rabbits
in general have declined in eastern Washington, and this is
surprising, as both Black-tailed Jackrabbits and Nuttall's
Cottontails are still common in much disturbed areas in other states.

We saw a Bald Eagle on a nest at Steamboat Rock State Park on Banks
Lake and a Great Horned Owl on a nest in the usual cliff about 5
miles west of Vantage.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382

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