As those of you who are WOS (Washington Ornithological Society) members know, the latest newsletter has the registration information for the upcoming WOS June Conference. The information is also now on the website: wos.org. Be sure to check it out. The conference is based out of the Red Lion Wenatchee, June 11-14, 2010. Registration will begin on April 1!

I wanted to highlight some items of interest, for what I think will be a very interesting and fun conference. There are a total of 38 daytime field trip and 5 night field trips (including three going-home trips) to a diverse area including Lake Chelan, Lake Wenatchee, Waterville Plateau, Colockum Pass, Blewett Pass, Beezley Hills and many places in-between. There is a link for discounted rate rooms through the Red Lion on the wos.org website. These rooms are discounted 10.00 a room from their normal rate. Only the double queen rooms have refrigerator and microwave. It is peak season in the area. A few special things happening at Wenatchee will be the sale of T-shirts drawn by local artist Heather Murphy featuring a white-headed woodpecker in watercolor. She is also leading a field sketching workshop on Saturday afternoon for those that want to improve their field sketching abilities. Some birders don't have photo equipment available, or not all birds can be photographed and thus field sketching becomes a very useful tool to document rare birds.

The Wenatchee area is home to a diverse array of owls, including the Spotted Owl. WOS and the USFS believes that calling and spotlighting Spotted Owls at night could cause harm to this species already under various pressures, so the two groups have come to an agreement; the Friday Blewett Pass trip will visit a Spotted Owl territory under the supervision of the USFS biologist and participate in a formal check of the birds during daylight period. Night trips will not target spotted owl. This will avoid further stress to Spotted Owls and will allow some WOS members the chance to get good looks at this rare species!

Friday night the Washington Bird Records Committee (WBRC) will do an encore from their Kelso performance, this time focusing on how to find and identify some of the vagrants that routinely show up in Washington. If you've wondered how to target certain places at certain times of the years to look for vagrants or what identification features allow one to pick a stint out of a mudflat full of peeps or a vagrant warbler out of a cottonwood full of regular Wilson's and yellow-rumped; the committee will enlighten you! Saturday evening banquet speech will be given by Ken Bevis who is a wonderful speaker and a long-time habitat biologist with WDFW. He will focus on habitats of North Central Washington; an area that has some of the most diverse habitats in the state as the field trip offerings will allude to. His presentation will be accompanied by photographers by Teri Pieper.

There have been some minor changes in leaders since the field trip printing in the newsletter went out; check the website for the latest info. We hope to see many of you there in June. The Board, especially myself and Dan Stephens have worked hard to bring the very best in fieldtrip leadership and locations to the conference and we hope everyone who comes to Wenatchee will fully enjoy themselves. A WOS conference has never occurred in the greater Wenatchee area and the area in early summer is a wonderful place to visit.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA