Hi Tweets,

Bruce Labar and I headed for the Okanogan Highlands Feb. 27 & 28, one more time before the snow all melts away. And the snow is melting fast! The massive rain storm on Feb. 26th and weekend temperatures in the high 30Fs, melted a whole of snow. It was especially notable on the Waterville Plateau where the whole area around Mansfield is showing the green shoots of winter wheat. The one remaining area of snow was to the SW of Mansfield centered on 11th NW & F St.

Our primary goal was to find Redpolls, so we headed directly to Chesaw via Havillah & Nealy Road. Then up Bolster Rd, back to Chesaw, up part of Mary Anne Creek R0ad and back to Havillah Sno-Park via Hungry Hollow Road.

Nealy Road: Turns into a dirt road that is relatively solid, but still mixed snow and mud.
150 Snow Buntings - At first stock farm after turn-off. They were going from the telephone wires to the hay feed of the stock. Quite a few of them appeared to be in alternate plumage.

120 Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches - about a mile down the road, working the hillside. The majority were of the Hepburn's subspecies, but we were able to pick out couple individuals of the Interior race, as well.

1 Clark's Nutcracker

Chesaw: We made the local newspaper! According the proprietor of the local mercantile, there was a piece in the local paper about watching out for cards seemingly parked in the middle of the road and brief explanation about bird watchers. She was quite good-natured about the situation, but a recent stopped car on the ess curves down into town gave her a scare. Extra bonus - free coffee! - donation optional.

300 Common Redpoll - and yes, we originally located the group at the start of the ess curves down into Chesaw feeding in the hillsides of mullein. We scanned this flock for a couple of hours hoping to find a Hoary Redpoll. The beauty of having so many birds to look through, is that eventually you see all variations of plumage. We found several birds that were already in alternate plumage with beautiful pick breasts against a white belly. Alas, Chesaw was hopping on Saturday and we swear a car went by every 5 minutes, which would put the Redpolls up. We finally moved on. So we moved on to Mary Anne Creek Road and upon our return to Chesaw road ran into the same? flock of Redpolls bathing.

Hoary Redpoll - The sun had finally come out and we were enjoying watching the Common Redpolls bathing, when a paler bird landed in the closest tree in front of us to preen. We had scoped a lot of "whiter" redpolls earlier, but all had noticeable streaking on the sides and flanks - this bird didn't! We then had a full 5 minutes of the bird in sunlight & scoped with Swarovski scopes at 20 yards.
Description: Head - yellow beak, with black behind beak and dark read fore crown. The auricular area was a pale tan with no streaks. Breast & belly white with a touch of light pink in the upper quarters of the breast. One faint vertical pale gray streak on one side of breast - couldn't see one on the other side. Bird was paler overall with the overall tone being a grayer brown than the adjacent Common Redpolls. The rump was white with a few grayish brown stipples (end of feathers?) Seen 1420-1450hr on February 27, 2010.

Belted Kingfisher - the famous "Chesaw Kingfisher". We saw a female, curious if someone has seen a male.

Bolster Road: Golden Eagle, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Brown Creeper , Red-breasted Nuthatch & Mountain Chickadees ( no Redpolls)

Havillah Sno-Park an hour before sunset: Northern Pygmy-Owl, Pileated Woodpecker calling non-stop, Great Horned Owl. No Great Gray Owl seen.
Rough-legged Hawks - at dusk we had 7 birds in a row fly from the north and over us to the south.

Sunday Feb. 28th the Waterville Plateau was fogged in, but we crept our way through the area.

Mansfield: Merlin by the grain elevators, along with Euro Collared-Doves.
Heritage Road: Short-eared Owl and 2 American Tree-Sparrows
Hwy 172 & F St between 8th & 14th: Golden Eagles, Rough-legged Hawks - 4. Horned Larks were around, but the numbers were drastically smaller than a few weeks earlier. No sigh of Lapland Longspurs or the Snowy Owl on F.

Good Birding,
Marcus Roening
GSK Oncology - Hematology
Tacoma WA
marcus.d.roening at GSK.com
C: 253-988-8313

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