Jim Pruske and I led a Black Hills Audubon field trip to Ridgefield NWR yesterday. We walked the Oak Woodland trail in the Carty unit early because there was a Lewis and Clark/Ridgefield Heritage Days celebration centered at the newly built Plankhouse near that trail, which was to begin at 10:00 am. We had several nice small birds and Trumpeter Swans, but not our target White-breasted Nuthatches. We then made our way to the River S auto route, spending several hours there. Fortunately Jim finally heard a White-breasted Nuthatch on the trail to the blind and we were able to locate several. We still had not seen a Sandhill Crane which was our other "advertised special" of the day, so Dave Hayden suggested we try to the Dike Access Road in Woodland. There were no Sandhills and we were entertaining ourselves watching Great Egrets when suddenly we saw and then heard a huge flight of large birds flying south. Most of the estimated 1400 Sandhill Cranes continued past us in waves of birds, but about 200 settled into a field in front of us. We all felt better about not having gone to Othello this weekend.

About the time we were almost satiated with Sandhill Cranes, Bill Tweit happened upon us, and reported finding a Say's Phoebe back up the road. We turned back, and located 2 Say's Phoebes. They were life birds for several field trip participants. As we started to head back to Olympia, Bill came back to tell us he had found a Short-eared Owl, which also was a life bird for several. While it was windy at times during the day, we were only rained on for a few minutes near the end of the auto route. We had already deemed the day delightful and successful, and Bill's additions were icing on the cake. We had a total of 66 species for the day.

Carty Unit:

Trumpeter Swan
Gadwall
Mallard
Common Merganser
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Rock Pigeon
Band-tailed Pigeon
Belted Kingfisher
Pileated Woodpecker
Steller's Jay
Scrub Jay
Tree Swallow
Violet-green Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
Bewick'sWren
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
American Robin
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Spotted Towhee
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Violet Green Swallow

Additional species at River S Unit:

Pied-billed Grebe
Great Blue Heron
Canada Goose
Cackling Goose
American Wigeon
Cinnamon Teal
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Canvasback
Ring-necked Duck
Greater Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Bufflehead
Hooded merganser
Ruddy Duck
Osprey
Northern Harrier
American Kestrel
American Coot
Killdeer
Greater Yellowlegs
Wilson's Snipe
Mourning Dove
Great Horned Owl
American Crow
White-breasted Nuthatch
Marsh Wren
European Starling
Golden-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird

I-5 north to Woodland:

Cooper's Hawk

Additional species Dike to Access Road-Woodland:

Great Egret
Sandhill Crane
California Gull
Caspian Tern
Short-eared Owl
Say's Phoebe

And I-5 just north of Kelso:

Turkey Vulture

Kristin Stewart
Olympia
kristinstewart01 at comcast.net