Nothing to warrant capital letters in the message, but we did see 15 Red-necked Phalaropes at the south end of Soap Lake and another 10 in the wastewater ponds just south of Coulee City, along with lots of Wilson?s Phalaropes and American Avocets at the latter locality. Those ponds deserve visiting frequently, as they look like good shorebird habitat, also full of dabbling ducks. We also visited Summer Falls State Park to the south of Coulee City, and it had a lot of common migrants in the park trees. Looks like a good migrant trap, right in the middle of the sagebrush. Also lots of good sagebrush and some grassland along Pinto Ridge Road between there and Coulee City.

I had not done any birding on this road before, and I strongly recommend that Coulee City to Summer Lake State Park be included in the revision of the bird-finding guide to Washington!

Soap Lake and Lake Lenore were also full of Ruddy Ducks (200+) and Eared Grebes (40+). When are they going to migrate?

Another - to me - very interesting thing was the steady stream of individuals and small groups of California Gulls flying south along Lake Lenore in the morning, totaling 50+ over a period of a half hour. Where in heck were they going? There were no Ring-billed Gulls in this flight, although there were a few ring-bills floating on the lake.
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Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net