Dear Tweeters,

I visited several of the counties in southern WA over Presidents Day weekend, February 18-21, 2011. Here are some Skamania County highlights.

Thanks to Stewart Johnston, I was able to relocate a Clark's Grebe in Skamania County, perhaps no more than fifty meters from Klickitat. This was on Sunday afternoon, 2-20-2011. If I remember right, Stewart had seen the Clark's Grebe in Klickitat County. When I arrived, the bird was with a few dozen Western Grebes in the Columbia River, just beyond the railroad bridge over the White Salmon River mouth, west of the county line.

There were also a few Barrow's Goldeneyes in the White Salmon River, both near the mouth and at the overlook 0.6 miles up the road (i.e., in both Skamania and Klickitat).

On the Skamania side of the river mouth, north of the SR 14 bridge, there is a little dock, just a stone's throw from the embankment along the highway. There were two very pale gulls there that I was almost certain were Glaucous Gulls, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect they were Glaucous X Glaucous-winged. They were juveniles. Everything was right for Glaucous Gull, except for the bills. Both birds had mostly black bills, with just a small, smudgy area of dull pinkish at the base. Referring to the Olsen & Larsson gull book, the birds had plumage like that of the bird pictured on page 199, photo number 220 (L. h. barrovianus), but their bills were more like that of the "putative" GWGU X GLGU pictured on page 202--except that the birds I saw had a dark area that was much more extensive than that shown in the photograph (photo number 239).

At Bonneville Dam, I saw an adult Western Gull. This was not the first time I had seen one in Skamania County, but I was surprised when I got home and checked the Matt Bartels county list--the species is coded "red" or "5" in Skamania. This was a good, dark-mantled adult. It had pink legs, jet black wing tips, and was about the same size as the Glaucous-winged Gulls near it. All of these gulls were roosting on a concrete structure downstream from the dam; I scoped them from a pullout between the entrance road and the visitors' gate.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

Gary Bletsch

Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA

garybletsch at yahoo.com




At the mouth of the White Salmon River,
Gary Bletsch?Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA?garybletsch at yahoo.com?Mentre che li occhi per la fronda verde
ficcava ?o s? come far suole
chi dietro a li uccellin sua vita perde, lo pi? che padre mi dicea: ?Figliuole,
vienne oramai, ch? ?l tempo che n?? imposto
pi? utilmente compartir si vuole?.??