Subject: [Tweeters] Old Vantage Highway to County Line Ponds highlights
Date: Apr 20 23:08:59 2009
From: Evan Houston - evanghouston at yahoo.com


Hi Tweeters,

I took advantage of the great weather yesterday (Sunday) to cross the mountains in search of eastside shrub-steppe and other specialties. I was lucky enough to find a good number of my targets, and I have listed a few highlights and a link to a some photos below. I ended up running a route very similar to the one posted the day before by Andy Stepniewski?s class trip ? thanks to him, Jesse Ellis, and others, for posting very helpful info.

Along the Old Vantage Highway, I hiked about a half mile on the trail from the western Quilomene Wildlife Area access, at about mile marker 18. Among the near continuous Sage Thrasher and Brewer?s Sparrow song, I found a few cooperative Sage Sparrows, a couple Vesper Sparrows, and a Horned Lark. This was a great stop to enjoy these shrub-steppe specialties, but be careful ? I got a couple splinters from climbing over the fence to walk the trail.

Gingko Petrified Forest State Park held some nice migrants, including single Nashville and Orange-crowned Warblers, Lincoln?s Sparrows, 2 Townsend?s Solitaire, and a silent empid that by date and the field marks I processed was probably a Pacific-Slope Flycatcher.

On Huntzinger Rd., I stopped at a rocky outcrop just below the Wanapum Dam that Scott Downes told me about, and almost instantly after opening my car door, I heard singing Rock and Canyon Wrens.

On Lower Crab Creek Rd about 5 miles from the west entrance where the large cliffs are a bit closer to the road I encountered White-throated Swifts and a heard-only Chukar. Falcons were putting on nice courtship aerial displays, though they were a little bit far away for me to comfortably ID, but after I got back, Andy Stepniewski told me they were predominantly American Kestrel.

Further east at County Line Ponds, the shorebirds I saw were Black-necked Stilt, American Avocet, and Dunlin. It was amusing to realize that some of the ducks swimming around like typical dabblers were not in fact ducks but Avocets!

To top off my nice day, I made one last stop off Hwy 26 at D Rd. SE (mentioned in the Birder?s Guide to WA). Near the intersection with 15.1 SE, I saw a flyby Long-billed Curlew, 4 Sandhill Cranes overhead, and a perched intermediate morph Swainson?s Hawk.

The link to a slide show of my non-professional pictures (click on any pictures to get information on it) are at:

http://tinyurl.com/d2xo9d

Good birding,
Evan Houston
Seattle, WA