Hi Tweeters & Inland-NW-Birders -

An updated version of the 2010 county year list project is up at
Washington Birder. We've received updates from almost all the
counties with details through the end of February. Moving forward,
county compilers, especially for the underbirded counties, would
appreciate receiving reports of any birds seen in their counties.

The posted version of the list only covers results through the
beginning of March -- at this point, many counties are over 100
species with many/most of the winter species found. Now comes the big
spring influx that will keep things interesting.

As of the end of February 241 species had been reported across the
state, 210 species in western WA and 185 in eastern WA. I did a
quick comparison of the list at this point with the same list from
last year -- hard to make any pronouncements based on kind of random
timing , but a couple things were noticeable -- one hypothesis some
of us have been playing with was whether or not the warm winter had
allowed some of our 'regular rarities' to stay further north this
winter -- sure enough, no rare geese, swans or ducks showed up this
winter [until the Skamania Tufted Duck], and arguably rare gull
numbers are lower -- with only 8 counties reporting Glaucous Gull
thusfar this winter compared to 17 counties having one to report last
year at this point. Also, we've had 4 counties with Loggerhead
Shrike already this year, compared with zero at this point last year
-- maybe a sign of a species willing to linger further north this
year.

If you'd like to take a look at where things stand, the list and many
other interesting files are at the Washington Birder website:

<http://www.wabirder.com/>http://www.wabirder.com/


A direct link to the 2010 county yearlist & the list of county compilers is:


http://wabirder.com/bartel.html

Thanks to all the compilers and all those pitching in to sketch a
picture of another year's birds in WA.


Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA