The Washington Ornithological Society was chartered in 1988 to increase knowledge of the birds of Washington State and to enhance communication among all persons interested in those birds.
Check out field trips, lodging, meals, evening programs and other information for the 2022 WOS Annual Conference, scheduled for June 9 – 12, 2022 in Spokane Valley, Washington. Registration opens 8 a.m. April 24, and it’s wise to make hotel reservations as soon as possible to get the WOS group rate and avoid high seasonal rates in the Coeur d’Alene tourist area. The theme of the conference: Shrub-steppe to meadows to peaks. It reflects the diverse array of habitats in this lesser explored area east of Spokane. The popular Stump the Experts quiz returns Friday night. Keynote speaker Saturday night is Mike Munts, Refuge Biologist for the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge. His topic is the Great Gray Owl: Introduction to the Ghost of the Forest. All conference attendees will be required to show proof of vaccination and follow COVID-safe guidelines provided by the WOS board for the conference. A 2022 Conference T-shirt and poster with original art work by Lisa Hill will be available for purchase. Go here for all conference information and here to begin registration after 8 a.m. April 24, 2022.
WOSNews for April and May of 2022 provides the latest on the upcoming 2022 WOS Annual Conference in Spokane Valley June 9-12, 2022. Shep Thorp talks about the weekly birding walks that have been going on at the Nisqually NWR for nearly 20 years. A remembrance of Terry Wahl by those who knew him best outlines his staggering record of contributions to field ornithology in Washington State. The Washington Ornithological Society seeks a volunteer editor for its bimonthly online newsletter, WOSNews, beginning this July. Take a look at the Westport Seabirds 2022 schedule of pelagic trips — 20 of them between April 23 and Ocober 8. Tom Bancroft describes the auditory splendor of a trip to the Mary Ann Creek wetlands in Okanogan County last June. WDFW is reviewing the conservation status of nine species in 2022. Current Newsletter.
Patrick Sullivan
Undergraduate students with ties to Washington State are encouraged to apply for grants from the Patrick Sullivan Young Birder’s Fund (PSYBF) to support research related to wild birds or related topics in Washington state. Applicants should propose research to take place during the 2022 calendar year that is done under the coordination or supervision of their undergraduate faculty. Grants will range from $1,000 to $1,500. The new approach is part of the board’s effort to strengthen the Young Birder’s Fund and also WOS’s diversity and inclusion efforts. For more information, go to the PSYBF page.
Each year WOS publishes information about most of the Audubon CBCs scheduled to go on around the state, so that birders can consider joining counts whenever and wherever they prefer. The 2021 CBC information has just been posted on this website. The big days look to be December 18th and, for procrastinators, January 2nd, but there are counts on many other dates as well. Jim Danzenbaker, a former WOS president, has gathered this information for the last five years. Thanks, Jim! Check out the counts here.
Common Crane (Rachel Hudson photo)
The Washington Bird Records Committee (WBRC) held its fall meeting via Zoom on October 23rd, during which it added Common Crane to the official state checklist. The checklist now stands at 522 species. Among the accepted reports at the meeting were Costa’s Hummingbird, Purple Gallinule, Little Stint, White-rumped Sandpiper, Black-headed Gull and Snowy Egret. A sighting of a Philadelphia Vireo in September in Washtucna was supported by photo documentation, the first time for this species. Ten reports were not accepted by the committee. Read the WBRC Fall 2021 Meeting Results here.
Thanks to a partnership with Cornell Lab of Ornithology, we now have a terrific new benefit for WOS members: FREE online access to “Birds of the World,” the world’s largest online encyclopedia of birds. Inside its 10,700+ scholarly, in-depth species accounts you’ll find expertly curated media galleries with photos, videos, and sound recordings, dynamic range maps, breeding calendars, and other life history details. Soak up detailed accounts of every species and every family and use the Taxonomy Explorer to explore the birds in your own county. Learn more about this benefit and how to get access to it on our Birds of the World page.
Volume 13, edited by Ed Swan, features articles by more than two dozen contributors. Included are four general interest articles covering diversity and inclusion in birding, habitat change, and birding highlights from all 39 Washington counties. Also in this issue are seven articles with updates, analysis, and expanded knowledge on regularly occurring species covering topics such as the end of the Northwestern Crow as a distinct species and the “Western Flycatcher” problem in Washington. And 11 articles provide species accounts for 14 species new to the Washington State list since 2005, when the latest Birds of Washington State by Wahl et al. came out. Finally, you’ll find the 11th report of the Washington Bird Records Committee (previously published in Western Birds). Read Volume 13 now.WOS Board Member Jason Fidorra has created a Facebook Groups page to allow for more interaction and participation among WOS members in hopes of engaging a broader public with birds and birding topics in Washington. Thanks to Elaine Chuang, WOS also is now posting many of its monthly meeting presentations on WOS’s YouTube channel, so that people can view them at any time. For more information about WOS’s online offerings beyond this website, go to the WOS Online page.
All 13 of WOS’s Washington Birds journals published between 1989 and 2021 can now be read on this website or downloaded. Volume 13 was published in April 2021. WOS had already placed the four most recent journals before that online. And WOS President Jennifer Kauffman recently had the eight earlier journals scanned to .pdfs so the complete set of journals could be made available here. Find them at the bottom of the Washington Birds page.
Go to WOS’s Monthly Meetings page for information on our fabulous monthly meeting programs. WOS members who live outside the Seattle area (or are on the road) can still attend using a computer, tablet or phone. It’s easy!
