Hello, tweets.

If anyone out there is aching to see Black Swifts and hasn't found a
place to do so yet, I spent much of the day yesterday at Scatter
Creek and Tucquala Lake at 3300' on the road north of Salmon La Sac,
Kittitas County. The road turns to gravel, fairly rough in some
areas, and you have to cross Scatter Creek eventually, but any car
can make it to the creek, and vehicles with high clearance can easily
make it through it. The creek was running deep enough that we decided
not to, with our relatively low-clearance Subaru, and we parked the
car there and walked farther up the road. Tucquala Lake is just a bit
north of Scatter Creek, and there were several pairs of Lincoln's
Sparrows, Barrow's Goldeneyes, and lots of nighthawks feeding on an
abundant hatch of mayflies there.

Black Swifts were over our heads in the beautiful blue sky much of
the day, and I assume they must nest somewhere around there. I think
the swifts may have been feeding on mayflies, as the latter were
dancing even up at the tops of the tall spruces. I was even able to
get a few photos.

It was worth going up there just for the flower show, which was
magnificent. Butterfly variety wasn't great, but there were a fair
number, including a big flight of California Tortoiseshells. The only
dragonflies we saw were lots of Taiga Bluets and a few Boreal Bluets
at Tucquala Lake.

This is in the lower right corner of p. 81 in the DeLorme atlas.
Sorry I didn't get this posted last night, but we were occupied with
company.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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