Tweets,
I couldn't resist chiming in here on this discussion. The debate on assisted or not will probably go on long after any of us are still birding and we aren't going to solve it for this record and obviously its something that makes BRC members job difficult. My take on the issue (since we don't have strong evidence either way) is to error on the side on what is the least harm. If you are in a criminal court, the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" is put into place as we don't want to send innocent people to jail, thus the burden of proof falls to the side of what we perceive as the greatest "wrong" and try to avoid it. If we look at the bird in the same light, if we are wrong by saying assisted then likely over the years a pattern will evolve and the record can be re-examined. If we are too quick to call it a first state record (I believe though the previous record of verdin was 1-2 years ago, possibly around Olympia if I'm remembering at all correctly) then ornithological records and potential range of the species in vagrancy is determined and affected. To my personal opinion the latter is much worse to be in error on. Thus, I'm must completely agree with Doug's opinion on this, by all means the record should be submitted if possible and as far as lists, that's a personal choice, but would personally be very cautious until there is more evidence available than "I don't think it was assisted". As I said in the beginning we aren't ever going to all agree on this argument, but wanted to at least voice my opinion.

By the way, in looking at the photos, my vote for the plant in one of the photos would be coyote willow, which is common in the lower grand coulee.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA