I am only going to capitalize the special birds of a magical day in the Gorge today. Les Carlson, George Mayfield and I conducted a Skamania County Big Day with near perfect conditions of low winds and warm temperatures.The only minus was the smoke from the fires in eastern Washington and Oregon but by the time we had passed Wind Mountain, near Home Valley, the winds had changed and blew the smoke back to the east. We started at my place about a mile east of the Clark County line and counted 31 species before heading out. The best species there was a CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD. After going down to the Schoolhouse Creek wetlands, on the Washougal River to pick up GREEN HERON, we headed for Marble Road to check the open fields there. We found a swarm of Barn and Violet-green Swallows right on the county line that included many Vaux's Swifts and at least a dozen BLACK SWIFTS. There was a good raptor flight in with 12 Turkey Vultures, 2 Red-tailed Hawks, I Cooper's Hawk, 2 Sharp-shinned and a Northern Harrier. It was 11:30, and I could still stick my hand into Clark County from the road we were birding from, so we decided we better head east before we ran out of light. At Doetsch Pond, at the east end of Skamania Landing, we relocated the juvenile RED-SHOULDERED HAWK. It flew out of the same tree I saw it in a few days ago and flew across the pond and then in response to playing it's call, it flew back and landed in the tree it was originally in. At Stevenson, I spotted a small white "gull" over the Columbia River that turned into the county's first FORESTER'S TERN when we got our binos on it. At Underwood we picked up Wild Turkeys and a Merlin before heading back to the west to check some of the areas we had bypassed to save time. One of those spots we had skipped was Home Valley Park, wheat the windsurfing beach George spotted another tern, this time it was a COMMON TERN, only my second record in the county. We were checking the mud around the small shallow bay for shorebirds, when I noticed that there was an adult SANDHILL CRANE standing about 50 yards from us, this is the only Sandhill I have ever seen on the ground in Skamania County. We kept adding birds right up until we ran out of light with the last ones being Virginia Rail, Marsh Wren and my first of the Fall Golden-crowned Sparrow. Our total for the day was 80 species.

Wilson Cady