Birders' top spots: Frog Lake, Crab Creek and Marsh trails

DOUGLAS C. PIZAC / AP The American avocet is among birds often sighted at the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Washington.

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Habitat: CNWR site with two miles of Crab Creek, more than 100 acres of riparian marsh and shrub-steppe backed by a basalt butte.

Best seasons for birding: Spring and summer.

Birds commonly seen: Spring brings song and white-crowned sparrows galore, plus numerous creek-side singers: lazuli buntings, yellow-breasted chats, rock wrens, Bullock's orioles and eastern and western kingbirds. Violet-green, northern rough-winged, bank, cliff and barn swallows fly over the creek. Other birds include common nighthawks, vesper and Lincoln's sparrows and sometimes sage thrashers. Receding wetland waters in April and May provide forage for shorebirds: breeding killdeer, black-necked stilts, American avocets, Wilson's phalaropes and spotted sandpipers. Migrating northbound are western and least sandpipers, dunlins, greater yellowlegs and long-billed dowitchers, and, occasionally, marbled godwits and black-bellied plovers. A rare June visitor is the white-faced ibis. Midsummer "marsh irrigations" attract lesser yellowlegs, semipalmated plovers, five species of sandpiper and many other shorebirds.

Viewing tip: One-mile Crab Creek Trail, 1.5 miles of Marsh Interpretive Trail and Frog Lake Butte loop are open April 1-Sept. 30; take two-mile Frog Lake Trail all year. Trail gains 200 feet in last half-mile up Frog Lake Butte.

Getting there: From Highway 17 at Milepost 29.4, turn west onto Cunningham Road/Main Street, into Othello. Drive 1.9 miles. Turn right (north) onto Broadway Avenue/McManamon Road. Drive 5.5 miles. Turn right (north) onto Morgan Lake Road. Drive 3.5 miles. Park in lot on left (west). Cross road to trails.

Source: Audubon Washington. For free maps of Washington birding sites, call 866-922-4737 and ask for Great Washington State Birding Trail maps ("Cascade Loop" or "Coulee Corridor"), or request online at www.wa.audubon.org.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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