Tweets -

Today I again walked the big loop trail around the Mima Prairie on the
Mima Mounds N.A.P. The two hot items are the Sooty Grouse (still) and
now at least 2, maybe 4, Vesper Sparrow. Full list at bottom of this
post.

The Sooty (Blue) Grouse was again hooting in the Douglas-fir stand, and
remains unseen. Since I wrote about this bird a little over a week ago,
I've had the chance to read a bit on it. The bird is notoriously
difficult to find even when it's hooting constantly. Seems as how they
have a ventriloquial quality to their calls, a small piece of
information missing from our contemporary visual-rich, textual-poor
field guides.

It was on April 12th last year when I saw two Vesper Sparrow here;
today I saw enough diagnostic marks on two to be certain, and two
others I have to regard as probable. If you want to look for them, try
first on the east side of the big loop trail.

For those of you who are also wildflower fans, the bloom has just
begun. Seen flowering today, small numbers of: Western Buttercup, Fine-
leaved Desert Parsley, and Broad-leaved Shootingstar on the prairie,
and in the forest, White Trillium. The Wild Strawberry have leaves up
to 2 cm long, so flowering cannot be too far off.

And finally, one Coyote seen.

This report was mailed for Doug Canning by http://birdnotes.net

Date: April 15, 2009
Location: Mima Mounds Natural Area, Thurston County, Washington

Low temperature: 12 degrees fahrenheit
High temperature: 13 degrees fahrenheit
Wind direction: SW
Prevailing wind speed: 1-5 km/h gusting to: 12-19 km/h
Percentage of sky covered by clouds: 70%
Precipitation: none

Made a slow walk around the 2.6-mile southerly loop trail, 1125 to
1438.

Birds seen (in taxonomic order):

Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) 2 [1]
Blue Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) 1 [2]
Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) 1 [3]
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) 1 [4]
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 1 [5]
Common Raven (Corvus corax) 4
American Robin (Turdus migratorius) 3
Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) 4 [6]
Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) 1
White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) 1 [7]
Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) 5 [8]

Footnotes:

[1] Heard.
[2] Heard.
[3] Not sexed.
[4] Male.
[5] Male.
[6] 2 certain + 2 likely.
[7] Heard.
[8] 4 singing, 1 seen.

Total number of species seen: 11

Doug

****************
Douglas Canning
Olympia, Wash.
dcanning at igc.org
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