Subject: [Tweeters] Birding Potholes
Date: Sep 28 08:20:49 2007
From: Joel Brady-Power - fvnerka at hotmail.com



I drove out to the potholes game preserve at the end of a long unmarked dusty gravel road Wednesday and set up camp for some quality eastern Washington birding. I didn't get there until around 3 in the afternoon, but still had some great birds that first day including Townsend's Warbler, American White Pelicans, Great Egrets, Black Crowned Night Heron(Juvenile), Sandhill Cranes, Osprey, and three Wilson's Pharalopes. That night when i was lying in my tent a great horned owl landed in a tree right above me and serenaded me to sleep under a harvest moon. I got up early the next morning and spent a good six hours roaming around the many ponds in the reserve. I saw a Mule Deer, about 25 Long-Billed Dowitchers, a handfull of Pectoral Sandpipers, and one peep that i am pretty sure was a Western Sandpiper though i am not positve. There were lots of Double-Crested Cormorants, Great Egrets, and half a dozen American White Pelicans gliding lazily on the breeze. Try as I might though i couldn't find anything, but White-Crowned Sparrows. No Vesper, Sage, or Lincolns, just HUGE flocks of White-Crowned with a couple of Song Sparrows mixed in. When i was leaving the reserve there were two Mountain Bluebirds hunting bugs from some fence posts. All in all it was a great couple of days of birding and now i am off to try and find Bell's Vireo. Ciao

Joel
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