Hi Tweeters,

My wife and I will be making our first visit to Washington state, from Aug
19 to Sept 9, 2009 and are requesting information on birding locations,
anywhere in Washington, which we simply MUST NOT MISS while we are in your
great state. If you are willing to help, please reply off-list, to the
email address provided below.

We are hoping to add as many of the western species (lifers for us!) listed
below as we can, so info on the best locations for them would be most
appreciated. As you can see, the list is extensive as we have never been
to the west coast!! I should mention, we are trying to schedule a
pelagic trip out of Westport, for some of the seabirds.

Albatross - Laysan & Black-footed
Shearwaters - Pink-footed, Flesh-footed, Buller's, Short-tailed & Manx
Petrels - Fork-tailed & Leach's
Brandt's Cormorant
Grey Partridge
Greater Sage-Grouse
White-tailed Ptarmigan
Sharp-tailed Grouse
Quail - Mountain, California
Plovers - Pacific Golden, Snowy
Wandering Tattler
Bar-tailed Godwit
Black Turnstone
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
Red Phalarope
South Polar Skua
Pomarine Jaeger
Gulls - Heermann's, Thayer's, Western & Sabine's
Elegant Tern
Murrelets - Xantus's & Ancient
Auklets - Cassin's & Rhinocerus
Band-tailed Pigeon
Owls - Flammulated, Western Screech, Northern Pygmy, Spotted, Great Gray &
Boreal
Common Poorwill
Black Swift
Hummingbirds - Calliope & Rufous
Sapsuckers - Williamson's & Red-breasted
Woodpeckers - White-headed, Black-backed
Flycatchers - Hammond's, Gray, Dusky, Pacific-slope
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Warblers - Hermit & MacGillivray's
Sage Sparrow
Tri-colored Blackbird
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch

In addition to touring and sightseeing Washington, we plan to do as much
birding as our 3 weeks allow. We have a rough itinerary planned, based on
several birding books (Birding Washington by Rob & Natalie McNair-Huff and
Birding in the San Juan Islands by Lewis & Sharpe), but as we all know, the
birds do not read those books and things do change.

Thanks in advance for any info you wish to provide and if you could, we
would also appreciate if you could clear out all of that HOT weather you
have out there right now. One of the reasons we planned to visit
Washington at this time of year, was to escape the hot and humid east coast
!!

Rich and Barbara Rehrig
Palmerton, PA
rrehrig at ptd.net