Subject: [Tweeters] WOS Columbia Basin Field Trip
Date: Sep 1 19:13:00 2013
From: Scott Downes - downess at charter.net


Spent the last two days with nine enjoyable WOS members. We visited on Saturday: Soap Lake, Sun Lakes SP, Coulee City STP, Steamboat Rock SP, Brooks Lake and Davenport Cemetery. On Sunday (today) visited area around Potholes including Lind Coulee, Perch Point, Potholes SP, Columbia NWR, Para Ponds, North Potholes and the Freeway Ponds near the Winchester Wasteway Rest Area (aka I-90 frontage road ponds). Best bird was a rare Red-crested Fruitpecker. This was found at Davenport yesterday afternoon. For those not familiar with this species, plumage is identical to Pileated Woodpecker and can only be told from different behavior. Behavior of the Red-crested Fruitpecker is to visit migrant traps and feed on Mt. Ash berries hanging upside down (similar to waxwings). Levity aside, this was a very unexpected sighting and very odd behavior for this species!
In general shorebird and passerine activity was moderate to slow. The biggest miss was Baird's Sandpiper! Other main shorebird miss was Solitary Sandpiper. The other noteworthy miss was a lack of any small terns on Potholes Lake. We had only two Caspian Tern here and no Common or Forester's despite looking hard for both.

Despite misses we did have some other nice birds they were:

Sanderling-1 at south end of Soap Lake
Semipalmated Plovers- several spots including Soap Lake, Brooks Lake and Potholes Lake.
Stilt Sandpipers-6 at Coulee City STP and 1 at Brooks Lake.
Pectoral Sandpiper-3 at I-90 frontage road ponds
Hairy Woodpecker-1 at Potholes SP

For the weekend, 112 species.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA