Subject: [Tweeters] Eastern Washington, again
Date: Sep 20 08:22:50 2011
From: Byers - byers345 at comcast.net


Hi Tweeters,

Because of enticing reports by Gus McWethy, Scott Downes, and
others over the last week, Bill and I decided to head back to eastern
Washington yesterday (Monday) to see some places we'd never visited and
maybe find some birds we'd missed the previous weekend. We arose early and
arrived at Vantage by 8:10 am. Here the rain and wind we'd experienced in
Seattle on Sunday hadn't quite abated. The wind was blowing hard and we
knew we wouldn't find much at the interpretive center. Before we left,
though, we decided to drop down to the road that dead ends at the Columbia
River below. At that elevation, the wind wasn't such a big problem and we
immediately started hearing birds. I heard one sort of scolding noise,
coming from the rocks above and thought it might be a Rock Wren. We found
the complainer and were surprised to see a juvenile CANYON WREN and then its
parent, flitting around on the basalt. Beautiful, and probably the best
looks I've ever had of this bird!

We had received Carl Haynie's alert about the SABINE'S GULL at
this same location, but because of the wind there wasn't much up in the air.
But then a small gull appeared not too far out in the river, working hard to
stay up in the air and, unfortunately for us, with the sun sort of behind
it. It did get close enough, though for us to see that it was an immature
Sabine's Gull. It kept getting blown back downriver, so we went down to the
boat launch near I-90, where we spotted it again before it vanished over
I-90.

Our next stop was Lind Coulee. Once we crossed the Columbia,
the wind died down. The coulee did have abundant mud. There were lots of
Canada Geese, ducks and shorebirds. We're not great at identifying
shorebirds, but we're pretty sure we did see LEAST SANDPIPERS, WESTERN
SANDPIPERS, BAIRD'S SANDPIPERS, AND PECTORAL SANDPIPERS and two DOWITCHERS.
We were hunting for the Stilt Sandpiper, but couldn't find one. There was
one spot on the stream where there were a lot of larger waders, but they
were sort of inaccessible-we would have had to bush whack through stuff
where, when I looked at it, I thought Snakes! so we may have missed
something there..

We drove up to Moses Lake and had lunch at Blue Heron Park.
Here the trees were laden with YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS. We also spotted one
or two RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS. This was a lovely spot, just off I-90 and
probably has good birds year-around.

Next we were off to the Rookery. I'd been there once long ago,
Bill never had, so we used Opperman's book, A Birder's Guide to Washington,
to find the spot, 7 or 8 miles south of Moses Lake and the northern side of
the Potholes Reservoir. Again, we were hunting for shorebirds, but found
few. I did hear, probably, a GREATER YELLOWLEGS calling, but when I looked
that direction saw instead the ominous form of a PEREGRINE FALCON swooping
over the pond there. We did see many GREATER EGRETS, WHITE PELICANS and 3
SANDHILL CRANES, though we didn't see any Black-crowned Nightherons, that
apparently nest there.

Heading home, we stopped at Vantage again, now windless and the
river a sheet of glass. Although we did find a few passerine birds,
including SAY'S PHOEBE and one TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE, there were only a few
gulls sitting on the river, which, although distant, appeared to be
RING-BILLED GULLS. We arrived home after about 13 hours on the road,
satisfied that we had found 56 species for the day.

Good birding, Charlotte Byers, Seattle