Tag: WOS convention

WOS Moses Lake Meeting Post

Lark Sparrow seen Thursday on our scouting trip to Gloys Seeps.

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.
Yellow-headed Blackbird was seen often on this trip.

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.

Black-chinned Hummingbird
Grasshopper Sparrow at North Potholes Reserve.

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.

Horned Lark

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/

An up close Bull Frog.

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.
Tree Swallow

Here are some photos from the weekend.

Good birding. Good day!

Scouting Day for the WOS 2019 Convention Trips

Lark Sparrow

Ken (see The Bird Banter Podcast Episode #2) and I headed out early today for the Moses Lake area to check out the areas were are leading field trips to on Friday and Sunday. Tomorrow we are going to the Gloyd’s Seep area in addition to two small parks near Moses Lake, Blue Heron Park and Neppel Landing. We had not birded two of these areas before, so in order not to get lost, and to feel ready we got here today and checked them out.
Great Egret

We first went to Blue Heron Park getting there about 9:15 AM. It was very windy near the lake, and we didn’t see much of interest on the water, a few Western Grebes, very few ducks, etc. It was better behind the bluff in the trees, and we added FOY Black-headed Grosbeak and a few other species.
A quick stop at Neppel Landing gave looks at the water, but few birds.
Yellow-headed Blackbird

Gloyd’s Seep is a much larger area that we had not visited before. It is a large patch of sage with a few trees and a big wetlands where a creek spreads out in a low area to form a big wetlands. We were hoping for lots of shorebirds and waterfowl. We saw small numbers of several ducks, including FOY Blue-winged Teal, but only 3 Long-billed Dowichers and Killdeer for shorebirds. Very few passerines were found.
Blue-winged Teal

Cinnamon Teal

We had time after this to scout the area of Sunday’s trip to the Potholes Reserve near the heron rookery. We felt much better about this area. We saw more FOY species, including Lark Sparrow, Forester’s Tern, and got nice looks at Clark’s Grebe and Spotted Sandpiper.
Turkey Vulture

Not to sleep fast and be ready to meet our group at 5:45 AM tomorrow.
Lark Sparrow

Wish us luck, good birding and a good day! The same to all of you.