Fort Walla Walla Natural Area Birds

This morning 8/28 my mom and I walked around the natural area and found lots of birds. The Yellow-breasted Chats are still singing, Gray Catbirds, Black-headed Grosbeaks and Western Tanagers are feasting on the chokecherries, Western Wood-Pewees are calling their plaintive call.

Many migrants are stopping there - Yellow, Townsend's, MacGillivray's, Wilson's and Nashville Warblers were all found along with good numbers of Warbling Vireo's. The Bewick's Wrens are again very vocal as are the Swainson's Hawk family. Enjoy these summer visitors before they all head south!MerryLynn

 

 

 

The Raptors Are Gathering

On Friday August 22 Deanna, Rodger, Ginger and I went out west looking for Raptors. We went out Frog Hollow to MacDonald and then south on MacDonald. The farmers were harvesting the alfalfa seed in the fields near the Waterbrook Winery site and the raptors were everywhere. You could count 24 at one time just scanning around. If you looked up in the sky there were many, many more. We concluded that you could almost pick any number for the quantity of raptors we saw and that number would probably be low.

Lots of Swainson's Hawks, many dark morphs and lots of juveniles. Many, many red-tail hawks sitting on the ground, on powepoles, on bee huts, just about everywhere. We even saw one balancing on a powerline.

We then continued west to Brynes Road where we found more raptors though not nearly the concentrations as on MacDonald.

Great birding and fascinating to see so many raptors and we were only out about 2 1/2 hours. Fun time.