I was in the Vancouver Lake lowlands looking for year-birds when call from Jim Danzenbaker and then Bob Flores alerted me to the TUFTED DUCK and BARROW''S GOLDENEYE on the Columbia. I left the lowlands since a bird in hand is better than etc. I easily found the birds right where Bob described and passed the alert onto Les Carlson. By the time Les arrived the flock had been flushed by an eagle and were now upstream of the next peninsula east along the trail. They had joined a flock consisting of several thousand LESSER SCAUP with a few GREATER SCAUP and both GOLDENEYES and a few WESTERN GREBES. After a lot of standing and glassing these actively feeding bird we found a Tufted Duck that seemed to have a shorter tuft than the one I had seen just downstream. Some walkers along the this paved trail mentioned that yesterday there was a BLACK SWAN in the boat works basin just east of Marine Park. Wilson Cady
Skamania County, WA
---------- Original Message ----------
From: "Bob Flores" <rflores_2 at msn.com>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>, "obol" <obol at oregonbirds.org>
Subject: [OBOL] tufted duck, Barrows goldeneye Clark Co, WA
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 12:33:56 -0800
<!--CTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//E--><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Following direction from those in Oregon, looking across the river, I found a tufted duck and two Barrow's goldeneyes along the shoreline of the Columbia River. To find the flock go to the last building of the Water Resources Building and park walk across the road you drove in on and walk east on the paved trail. You will come to some Condos and when you are closest to the river (SW corner of Condo Area) the birds are just yards downstream. For those with GPS tech. here is the coordinates. N 45 36.735, W 122 37.083.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">There was mention of a surf scoter being seen from the Oregon side. I did not find this bird.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Bob Flores</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Ridgefield, WA</span></div></html>