Tweets - today I did a leisurely swing through the Banks Lake, Steamboat
Rock, and Northrup Canyon area of Northern Grant County. It was a frosty
day, but sunny and windless. Banks Lake is drawn WAY down now, so there
were no shallows and few birds on the lake.

There were, however, hundreds of CANADA GEESE, a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, and a
few HERRING GULLS as I made my way north.

At Steamboat Springs SP, around the pond (Thomson Lake, or something like
that, which was completely dry, BTW) several AMERICAN TREE SPARROWS came
right out to the iPod. There was also a GREAT HORNED OWL in the trees
there, and a NORTHERN SHRIKE.

I spent four hours at Northrup Canyon, trying to find every bird there. It
was fairly quiet, but I did find a few birds:

Canada Goose A few flying overhead
Golden Eagle Adult being followed by a screaming juvie
Rock Pigeon All high on the cliffs
NORTHERN PYGMY-OWL One maybe 1/4 mile beyond the buildings
Black-billed Magpie Quite a few
Common Raven
Black-capped Chickadee Everywhere
Red-breasted Nuthatch One of the most common birds
Brown Creeper At least 2
Canyon Wren A dozen or more, mostly heard-only
Pacific Wren 1
VARIED THRUSH 2+
Song Sparrow Only sparrow, and not too many

No finches. The PYGMY-OWL was so cute - I came around a corner on the
trail and there it was, sitting on a small pine snag right along the trail.
It never moved as I passed underneath.

Nothing much in any of the other places I visited. I did find a few more
ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS and NORTHERN SHRIKE east of Banks Lake on the wheat
fields. On Pinto Ridge Rd., south of Coulee City, there was a PRAIRIE
FALCON. And on SR-28 just west of Pinto Ridge Rd., there was a flock of
large CACKLING GEESE.

Yesterday, at Lake Wenatchee, I found 3 TRUMPETER SWANS near the west end of
the lake.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== http://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm
== birdmarymoor at frontier.com