Subject: [Tweeters]
Date: Sep 23 18:54:45 2007
From: BRAD YONEOKA - yoneoka01 at msn.com




my wife and i spent 6 hours visiting the potholes and desert wildlife areas yesterday. particularly the potholes was terrific.

traveling from seattle, we arrive at i-90 exit 169 at about 7:30 am, and following the advice of sunny walter and janet o-mara in the falcon guide, we drove east to west. the highlight of the whole trip was the potholes rookery, just a half mile beyond the parking lot. early on the southerly unnamed road, we saw 8-9 magpies flying. at the rookery, several dozen great egrets, a great blue-heron, a couple of double-crested cormorants, a half dozen white pelicans, and several california and bonaparte gulls stood on a sand bar facing away from the road oblivious to visitors. flocks of egrets, cormorants and gulls all flew overhead, and off to the right from the sand bar. a couple of gadwalls were dunking for food. we walked on the wet shore, and could see hundreds of bird feet prints of all kinds. we saw only two vehicles. this was the most peaceful place and beautiful setting that we have seen birding.

retracing along frontage road west and then south on dodson road, we took the dodson road trail on the sand [count about a mi and a half, look for the dead end sign on the east side of dodson, turn sharply right after 15 feet or so], from viewing blind to viewing blind. on the audubon trail, we saw sage and vesper sparrows, a lone american coot, four marsh wrens, numerous bank swallows, red-winged blackbirds, two tufted ducks, as well as a father teaching his son how to shoot with a 22. no rattlesnakes. overhead we saw what looked like rough-legged hawks and several merlins.

from here, we continued south on dodson and turned west on frenchman hills road. while we saw four nests for burrowing owls on polls above the water, at 2 pm, there were no birds--owls or otherwise-- to be seen at birder's corner.

with that, we left to return to seattle.

a fun birding outing!
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