A followup on my post from the field. I viewed this loon from 2:00 until 3:30 when I left. It was still present when I left about a half mile north of Wanapum Dam, which is about 4 miles south of Vantage on the Columbia. The bird was almost at the midpoint of Wanapum Lake, so about 1/3 mile from shore. I watched it through the scope for these 90 minutes as it rarely dove, but did sleep for several periods. There were no other loons nearby. I have placed three HORRIBLE photos on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52299853 at N08/

One is an uncropped photo showing the distance from me to the bird, this was taken with a 300mm with no cropping. The other one is the same photo but is heavily cropped so you can actually see the loon. The third is an attempt at using my Iphone through the scope. I had to use it at 20X to even get it to work, so also had to crop it. The bird always showed considerable amounts of white above the waterline on both sides. The Iphone photo is probably the most accurate of that. The bird also showed a blockier head than a pacific and an unbroken neck line. Coloration of the neck was a rich brown and it appeared to have some slivery color on the nape when the sun shown on the nape, but that could have been lighting. Due to the distance, I should have said in my post before, it is probably an Arctic Loon. Based on the amount of white and the unbroken neck line, it is very doubtful it is an odd Common or Pacific. I have seen commons show some amounts of white above the waterline. The bill seemed larger than a Pacific and smaller than a Common. Bill sizes can be variable though. However, with no other loons nearby to compare to and the distance better photos are needed to fully confirm this bird. If people are making the trek to Ephrata for the owl, this is a nice stop. In my mind, it is about 95% confirmed, mainly due to distance. I just wanted to make sure people were aware of the situation before making long treks. A person with a digiscoping system would be very welcome to get better pictures of this bird.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA