Subject: [Tweeters] Clark County Big Day
Date: Jan 26 10:30:26 2008
From: washingtonbirder.Knittle - washingtonbirder at hotmail.com



Friday Wilson Cady and I attempted a Clark County Big Day. There are three things County Big Days do. 1.) increase chances of finding unusual birds by covering more than the normal birding areas. 2.) They promote the county cumulative year list. 3.) And they help one's own personal lists out.

Brad and George in Kitsap County have done Big Days in their area and in so doing have promoted more Big Day activity in other counties. Thanks Brad and George and the rest of the Kitsap birders.

I had been emailing Wilson and finally the weather and timing seemed to give us the "let's do it" green light.

Basically we started near dawn at Steigerwald NWR in the low 20's with lots of biting wind in the face and followed the Columbia River west and north to where the Lewis River meets the Columbia. In more detail we hit the Washougal neighborhood after leaving Steigerwald, then on to the sewer ponds in Vancouver, La Framboise St. out to Vancouver Lake, the Flushing Channel at Vancouver Lake, Lower River Rd., Ridgefield NWR, and finally ending up at the Lewis River.

Our total was 78 which included close to 300 Snow Geese split in two different flocks, the Mute Swan near Steigerwald NWR, 1 Clark's Grebe at Vancouver Lake, 1 Merlin at Ridgefield NWR on our second drive around the loop, and 1 Common Yellowthroat in the grass along the paved path going into the photo blind. Over 50 species were seen at Ridgefield NWR.

It was fun doing it on the spur of the moment and leaves improvement for future County Big Days. We even talked about doing a Big Day monthly which would definately help the cumulative County yearlist project which Matt has forced us to do-Ha!

It would be neat to see more of these County Big Days in the other counties and who knows what will show up. Being a first for Clark Co. we didn't have any idea what would be possible. I had mentioned maybe 65-70, but was presently surprise with 78. Going over the list the night before I figured there were 82 possible with another 50 which I listed as tough. Well, we found 11 of the tougher ones, but missed some fairly easy ones. Some of our worst misses were: Red-shouldered Hawk, Virginia Rail, Wilson's Snipe, Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker, Raven, and American Goldfinch.

Hope to see more postings on County Big Days. And send me your reports for Washington Birder on-line inclusion.
Ken KnittleVancouver WA 98665 mailto:washingtonbirder at hotmail.com Washington Birder online http://www.wabirder.com/