Hi Tweets,

Yesterday Barb and I spent an interesting day birding along the Columbia
River and Lower Crab Creek Road in Grant County.
Our day began with a serious snow storm with large, composite snowflakes
the size of tennis balls near George. Once down to the river it was raining
extremely hard making viewing and birding difficult to say the least.
We did manage some good sightings at Wanapum Dam area with the best being
an adult Glaucous-winged Gull. Also present was a single American Crow (our
fist sighting of this species at this site) and three American White
Pelicans.
South of Wanapum Dam we wandered through a large sagebrush flat to get a
better view of the river. In this flat we observed several migrating Sage
Sparrows. With nothing too exciting along the river we ate lunch and
continued down the river.
Intermittent rain continued to keep birds down and while we birded several
areas not much was to be seen, though we did find two more American White
Pelicans near Schwanna.
Returning to Lower Crab Creek Road we worked our way toward Othello.
Between hard rains and thick fog, we found little to hold our interest in
this usually superlative birding area. A beautiful dark Harlan's Hawk and a
Prairie Falcon eased the pain of few birds.
County line ponds held a few Canada Geese, Mallards, and Northern Pintail,
but not much else.
Para Ponds had a nice assortment of ducks and the feedlot offered good
views of at least 26 Tricolored Blackbirds among the thousands of Red-winged
and Yellow-headed Blackbirds.
Our highlight of the day occurred in the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge
as we watched a river otter play in one of the ponds along the main refuge
road.
We stopped at several Washington Ground Squirrel colonies during the day,
but the rain and heavy snowfalls of Saturday kept these small mammals
indoors.
All in all a good day. The Grant County Year List now stands at 120
species.

Cheers

Doug Schonewald
Moses Lake, WA
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