Sunday, March 29, 2009

Latah Co birding 3/29/09

Hi All -

Iris and I took a drive this afternoon east of Moscow to Troy and down Little Bear Ridge Rd. to Kendrick and Juliaetta along the Potlatch R. (elevation ~1200' about 1300' lower than Moscow) and then back up via American Ridge Rd.. We had ~4 " of heavy, wet snow up on top and there were scads of American Robins in the fields along with lesser scads of Red-winged Blackbirds and Starlings, a few W. Meadowlarks, etc.

There was a lot of standing water in the fields (and the Potlatch R. was bank full) but few waterfowl - perhaps spread out a bit all the standing water. There were 5 Bufflehead at Little Bear Pond (along w/ Mallards, pintail, and wigeon) and 11 at Kendrick sewage ponds, and 10 Ring-necked Ducks at the Syringa ponds.

Of most interest was a nice size flock of Savannah Sparrows just up American Ridge Rd. out of Juliaetta. It was hard to get a count estimate as they kept flushing ahead of me but there must have been 30 birds in the group - perhaps more. These birds were presumably hanging down at lower elevations due to the weather. Also in the group were a couple of White-crowned Sparrows - hard to know if these were migrants (a bit early) or local wintering birds.

Charles.

--
Charles Swift
Moscow, ID
chaetura@gmail.com

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