Subject: [Tweeters] Wallula Area and Corfu
Date: Mar 19 22:14:01 2006
From: SGMlod at aol.com - SGMlod at aol.com


Greetings All

Dennis and I must have narrowly missed each other near Corfu. Sorry to have
missed you.

Today birded the Wallula area with Barb and Doug Schonewald and my wife,
Casey.

There was a first year Iceland Gull at the Wallula "Poop Piles" plus 2
Glaucous Gulls and 3 Thayer's Gulls. The Iceland Gull was, as my wife described it,
biscuit colored -- about the typical color of a first year GLGU. It was
smaller than a Herring Gull (direct comparisons) and had an all dark, or nearly all
dark bill. There was no trace of tail band nor secondary bar in flight.

At the delta itself, there was a Mew Gull and a male Eurasian Wigeon. At the
Iowa Beef or Tyson Ponds, call 'em what you will, there was a female Eurasian
Wigeon. We had 2 Caspian Terns at the delta and one at McNary NWR. At the
McNary NWR headquarters, we had two tiny pale Cackling Geese with relatively long
bills and boxy heads. These were typical for Richardson's Goose and highly
atypical for all other taxa (direct comparison with parvipes, GWF Goose, and
Northern Pintail for size, etc). Their necks were short, even when stretched out
in alert position, and we are as confident as you can be with such that they
were of this race.

At the County Line Ponds near Corfu we were joined by Bob Flores and found a
Snow/Blue x Canada Goose hybrid. We decided Canada (vs Cackling) as the other
parent based on size and companions (there were very few Cackling Geese in the
flock, and the birds surrounding it were all parvipes, which it matched in
size). There were also two minima Cackling Geese present.

Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA