202- Snodgrass, Land Birds, of Central Washingto)>. ^" 



A LIST OF LAND BIRDS FROM CENTRAL 

 WASHINGTON. 



BY ROBERT E. SNODGRASS. 



During the summer of 1902 the Washington Agricultural Col- 

 lege equipped and maintained in the field for one month, a biolog- 

 ical collecting expedition. The material obtained includes princi- 

 pally mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects and plants. The 

 birds are given in the appended list. 



The region selected as the basis of exploration is the old dry 

 canon of the Columbia River in the northeast quarter of Douglas 

 County, known as the Grand Coulee. This is simply a great 

 gorge fifty miles long and from one to two miles wide, cut down 

 three hundred to five hundred feet into the enormous layers of 

 basalt that form the top of the country throughout central and 

 southeast Washington. 



Although the Grand Coulee is now dry, with the exception of 

 scattered, mostly alkaline lakes, having neither outlets nor inlets, it 

 certainly at one time was nothing less than the channel of the 

 Columbia River. There is no doubt that the latter, during glacial 

 times, was so dammed up to the west that its original course 

 became entirely closed. Its waters then rolled back upon them- 

 selves and a great lake was formed between the mouths of the 

 Sans Foil and Okanogan Rivers. When this became too great for 

 its embankments, an outlet stream started off overland to the 

 southwest. This, however, soon cut for itself a channel in the soft 

 basalt rock, and before the glaciers released the dammed up 

 waters of the lake and let them once more follow their natural 

 course in a great bend to the west and south, this short-cut stream 

 had formed the Grand Coulee. It met the old river bed far to 

 the southwest, near the Saddle Mountains and just south of where 

 the Northern Pacific Railroad now crosses the Columbia. Since 

 returning to its old course the river has cut its canon down five 

 or six hundred feet below the floor of the Coulee. This has given 

 to the people living in this region the notion that, if water ever 

 did flow through the Grand Coulee, it must have gone north and 

 not south. 



