Did some scouting of old haunts for my upcoming field trips to the Waterville Plateau for the WOS conference on Saturday. The shrub-steppe birds were abundant with numerous sage, brewer's, grasshopper, Vesper and lark sparrows plus other usual denizens like sage thrasher, canyon wren and white-throated swifts. Breeding ducks and shorebirds were in abundance on lakes like Jameson, Grimes and around St. Andrews on an un-named lake. There were a few lingering waterfowl that I must assume are late migrants as they shouldn't be breeding on these lakes including bufflehead, and common goldeneye.
A few interesting notables though. At the riparian areas along Hwy. 2 just west of Douglas was listening to the chatter of catbird, yellow-breasted chat and other typical riparian species for this spot when a VEERY started to call and eventually pished it out. I don't recall having this species at this location before and seems to be a possible migrant? The other nice migrant highlights came from the grove off of Heritage (Heritage and 14 NE) more commonly known for long-eared owls. This grove sometimes can produce some decent migrants, with Saturday being no exception. There was a calling GRAY FLYCATCHER and a female RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD. For the day, 86 species.

Checked the lower grand coulee and Vantage on my home and came up empty on Franklin's gull.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA