Ken Brown (see TBBP Episode #2) and I went to the Washington Ornithologic Society (WOS) convention last weekend and led two field trips as well as went on an epic trip led by Matt Yawney. On Thursday we scouted for our Friday trip to Gloyd Seeps, an area neither of us had birded before. This area has two parking lots off Road 12 on Hwy and we decided to park in the first lot, and hike across the sage / desert to the seep. This turned out to be a hot and long walk in the late morning. It was not terribly birdy until we got to the seep, and we discovered a series of paths and finally a road along the wetlands that went to the second parking lot. We were glad we did this alone, not with the group on the WOS trip. Later in the afternoon, after our briefly checking out areas in the North Potholes Reserve area for our trip Sunday, Ken and I decided to go to Othello and the Para Ponds, hoping to see the colony of Tri-colored Blackbirds there, as well as possible Black-necked Stilts, American Avocet and Wilson’s Phalarope. Success on two, TCBL and BNST. We found the avocet on a later trip, but few WIPH were in the area on any of the trips, and we saw none all weekend.
Friday and Sunday our field trips went uneventfully. Highlights were a perched male Black-chinned Humminbird on Fridays trip at one of the two city parks included, Blue Heron Park, and on Sunday a very cooperative Grasshopper Sparrow that gave everyone great looks. This is usually a hard to see and photograph species, and we felt really good about our looks.
The highlights, as mentioned in the podcast, were the Saturday trip with Matt Yawney, when we saw 115 species, I entered 19 eBird lists, and everyone felt like we had done a Grant County Big Day. Matt is the top county birder, with great local knowledge, as well as being young, sharp eyed and eared, and being a fine trip leader. He set the Grant County big year record last year with 243 species. On the trip we found a Hermit Warbler at Northrop Canyon, possibly a county first.
At the Friday WOS social hour and Stump the Experts slide show by Dennis Paulson, he called it Stump the Chumps, the audience volunteered guesses at ID of very challenging photos, and amazingly the audience got some of them right! He had several photos from the UPS museum collection of outstretched bird wings, really tough to ID as a stand alone photo. Check out the collection online here: https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/slater-museum/biodiversity-resources/birds/wing-image-collection/
On Saturday night I was privileged to sit at at table with Ken Brown, Bruce LaBar, Shawneen Finnegan and David Irons, all fine birders, good story tellers, and good folks. It made for great conversation and it was one of the highlights of my weekend.
Here are some photos from the weekend.
Good birding. Good day!