Michael,

Wrentits are secretive birds of dense shrublands and very weak fliers. One piece of evidence for this is that they never colonized the Channel Islands off southern California like many other small birds, including birds of their chaparral habitat, have.

I suspect the Columbia is just too wide for them.

Years ago Gene Hunn suggested a project for Washington birders. Place a solid row of shrubs along the bridge to Astoria and let nature take its course. No one ever took him up on it, and I don't know if they are even around Astoria.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


On Apr 11, 2013, at 12:00 PM, tweeters-request at mailman1.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:34:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: mcharest at wamail.net
> Subject: [Tweeters] Wrentit Question
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Message-ID: <38606.130.76.32.211.1365701645.squirrel at www.wamail.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Hi All,
>
> I ran across the mention of a Wrentit somewhere on the internet today and
> got curious about the birds. I looked up range maps for the species, and
> having little experience birding outside Washington State, I was surprised
> to find that the birds were found all the way up to Lewis and Clark Park
> across the Columbia River from Washington, but not a single bird ever
> reported in Washington that I could find on Ebird.
>
> I know that the Columbia is very wide around SW Washington, but still find
> it odd that not one bird has ever made it to Washington soil, stranger
> birds have showed up in stranger places for sure. The coastal scrub is on
> both sides of the river and from satellite views, Cape Disappointment
> looks like about as good a place as Lewis and Clark Park.
>
> Just Curious if anyone has thought about this before and why a Wrentit has
> never came across, or have they. Some range maps show SW Washington
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael Charest
> Tacoma, Washington




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