Hi Tweets!

Randy Bjorklund, Kevin Black and I spent a great day birding Eastern Washington on Sunday, starting high in the mountains and ending with some shorebirding in the Lower Columbia Basin. I had not been to Bethel Ridge in Yakima County before, so I was pretty excited to get to camp there - we made a good effort on Saturday night to pull up some Flammulated Owls or Common Poorwills, but came up short on both before going to bed. We had several good listens to a Barred Owl far down the ridge from our campsite, and another that seemed to be several miles away, maybe on the other side of Hwy 12, although it was hard to tell for sure!

We did fairly well with woodpeckers in the morning on Bethel Ridge - with Willamson's Sapsucker females at the burn below the microwave towers, as well as a Black-backed Woodpecker (lifer for me), and Hairy Woodpeckers. We had Red-naped Sapsucker a bit further down in an aspen grove, and got Downy Woodpeckers and Lewis' Woodpeckers later at Oak Creek for a good woodpeckery morning of birding. Chipping Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Mountain Chickadees provided most of the soundtrack for the morning.

Oak creek was full of the Lewis' Woodpeckers, and we also had quite a few wrens - Rock, Canyon and House - and some good passerines right at the bottom, including a silent empid that we chalked up as a Ham-sky Flycatcher... maybe a Dusk-monds... We also had White-throated Swifts above the cliffs near the entrance to the feeding station. The trip to the Tri-cities from there was not productive per se, but we did get great looks at Swainson's Hawks here and at other points on our route.

We tried for the recently reported Northern Parula at Chamna Park in the Tri-cities, but had no luck, and the weather got a good bit warmer from 11:00 on as we focused on shorebirds. Water levels were high for the hydro races, so we got very little at the WW River Delta that couldn't have been seen from the road - mostly the expected gulls, cormorants and pelicans. Dodd Road and surrounding ponds gave us a good start on shorebirds and ducks, including Killdeer, Black-necked Stilt, Long-billed Dowitcher, Spotted and Solitary Sandpiper. Black-crowned Night Herons were easily seen here and later in the day at Para Ponds. It would be irresponsible to advise stopping on the side of a major freeway, but we did on HWY 12 to view the ponds near exit 300, where we found more stilts, American Avocets, Western Sandpiper, Greater Yellowlegs and Long-billed Dowitchers. We also found a leucis.. I mean. albini.. well, we found what appeared to be an entirely white Brewer's Blackbird I forget what you call the condition that makes it completely white, but it was a strange bird mixed in with the blackbirds!

We had a good stop at a pond off of Pasco Kahlotus Road where we had Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Killdeer, a single Long-billed Dowitcher, Spotted Sandpipers, Pied-billed Grebes, Barn Owls at nest (which I missed!), and Blue-winged Teal. From here we went to Scootenay Reservoir - hitting some of the better spots there, but not finding much new.

Para Ponds in Adams county was good for shorebirds, with dozens of dowitchers, as many as 4 Solitary Sandpipers (we ended with some of these uncertain), Black-necked Stilts and American Avocets. Tricolored Blackbirds here (at least three) were the second life bird of the day for me - an odd one to pick up on the same day as Black-backed Woodpecker, and found at quite different extremes of altitude and temperature! We tried other spots around Othello before our last stop of the day - County Line Ponds. These were pretty well packed with shorebirds - lots of Leasts, none of which could get turned into a Semipalmated Sandpiper or Western at the distance we had. We had a suspected Baird's but it was too far back in the pond to do more than suspect. Long-billed Dowitchers, American Avocets, Greater Yellowlegs, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a pair of Wilson's Phalaropes finished up our day.

In the end, our combined list topped 100 species, although none of us saw all of them. A great day of birding, although I'm still pretty exhausted!

Happy Birding!

Tim Brennan
Renton