Tweets - I headed out right after Marymoor last Thursday for a long weekend
in SE Washington. I was working to fill some serious holes in my county
lists out there, and was somewhat successful.

Friday, Feb. 19, I had a huge flock of geese from Ivarson Rd. at McNary NWR,
Walla Walla county. It was mostly CANADA GOOSE and CACKLING GOOSE, but I
also had at least 3 GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE and 50-70 SNOW GEESE. Huge
numbers of ducks were around too, but the fog was THICK in places.

I spent the rest of Friday, plus Saturday morning, covering as much of
Columbia county as I could.

My first bird in Columbia county was a good one - a MERLIN on Lyons Ferry
Rd. At Lyons Ferry Pond HMU, I had a MARSH WREN singing. Saturday, at
Spring Lake, on Tucannon Rd., there were at least two VIRGINIA RAIL
"singing" - tock de dock

One funny one was three RIVER OTTERS in Curl Lake, which is fenced and
signed NO FISHING. I guess they didn't read...

Other birds of note in Columbia County were three NORTHERN SHRIKE, and one
or two ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS. Generally, despite very nice weather, things
weren't very birdy at all. Ducks were especially scarce, despite there
being very little ice anywhere.

In Whitman County Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, things were also
pretty quiet. I did have a couple of ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS over the Palouse.,
and a pair of BARROW'S GOLDENEYE at Lower Granite Dam amongst a large flock
of Commons. There was also a HUGE flock of White-crowned Sparrows there.
As I drove through Colton, I spotted a EURASIAN COLLLARED-DOVE.

Sunday, at an almost utterly quiet Steptoe Butte, I found a NORTHERN SHRIKE
down low. At the top, I noticed a bunch of shadows pass over my car. It
turned out to be 50+ GRAY-CROWNED ROSY-FINCH. I got good looks at a few for
about 45 seconds, but when I tried to get a better angle, they had
disappeared and could not be refound. At Ewan, on SR-23, I had a
TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE. At Rock Lake, there was a CACKLING GOOSE with about 8
Canadas Finally, moments before I reached the Lincoln county line, I had an
adult BALD EAGLE from SR-23.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== http://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm
== birdmarymoor at verizon.net.