I led a tour of the Pierce NWR in Skamania County today as a fill-in for the scheduled leader who came down ill. Despite the gentle rain ,we had a great outing with one ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, dozens of YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS and numerous COMMON YELLOWTHROATS to start us out. My first of the year (FOY) CASPIAN TERNS were flying up the Columbia River. Walking the roads we came across NORTHERN HARRIER and PEREGRINE FALCON, five species of woodpeckers; DOWNY, HAIRY, PILEATED, NORTHERN FLICKER and RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER. At least one TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE treated us to close views near Beacon Rock. After the participants left I headed to Stevenson and easily found the EURASIAN COLLARED-DOVE first located by Michael Hobbs. This dove can be seen from your vehicle as it comes to a feeder at 424 Rock Creek Drive, this is the brown house is on the south side of the road with a flagpole in the front yard, just west of the Texaco station. Rock Creek pond at the fairgrounds produced a GLAUCOUS GULL and a huge flock of swallows comprised of TREE, VIOLET-GREEN, NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED, CLIFF and BARN SWALLOWS. The first of two flocks of over a hundred GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE flew over heading west down the Gorge. I then drove up Ryan-Allen Road to the ponds at the intersection with Red Bluff Road and heard both SORA and VIRGINIA RAIL but missed on the Marsh Wren reported from there.heading home I did a quick check of Skamania Landing adding a MOURNING DOVE at the Sams-Walker Recreation site ending up with 72 species for the day. Wilson Cady
Skamania County, WA