Richard,

Today, a female Bufflehead and brood were photographed in Yakima County at Fort Simcoe about 20 miles west of Toppenish by Richard Repp, Jan Gano, and Bill Drenguis. Not only is this site considerably south of their known breeding range in Washington, the choice of habitat is unusual. Birds of Washington (Wahl et al.2005) cite nesting in Turnbull NWR and several Okanogan and Pend Oreille lakes. However, Birds of Oregon (Marshall et al. 2003) state Bufflehead is a "local, uncommon breeder in c[entral]. and s[outh] Cascades...in high elevation forested lakes."

Bufflehead breeding locations in the state I've looked at were montane lakes with mature conifers or hardwood forests extending to the lake edge. The Fort Simcoe wastewater ponds resembles an industrial site, with straight edges and a total lack of trees in the immediate area.

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato WA
steppie at nwinfo.net

Here's the news straight from Rich:

Andy,

This may be a duplicate email but my original was returned stating the message could not be delivered to your nwinfo.net address. I am trying it again.

After today's Simcoe survey[Lewis's Woodpeckers], we panned the waste water ponds between the Fort and the Job Corp.

Six species of ducks. There was a female Bufflehead with five young (perhaps 2/3 grown) on the pond. The 1999 checklist Andy produced does not indicate Bufflehead as Yakima County breeders. His book mentions birders should be on the look out for evidence of breeding here. I'm not qualified to judge if today's young would be capable of prolonged flight. But to be this large in mid-May is a bit of surprise, is it not?

Jan snapped a few quick photos...perhaps he could share those if anyone is interested. The young all resembled the female with a white batch on the back of a dark head...dark brown crown but lighter on the lower half of the head. All, including mom, had tails perked up like Ruddy Ducks. Big Sibley has an illustration of juvenile that match what I saw (thought I saw??) but labels it Aug - Oct. Hmmm, any thoughts?

Later,
Rich
R. A. Repp
Simcoe Survey Senior Serf
Rich712 at aol.com






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------