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Week Sixty-Two, May 20-26, 2002

Sunday, May 26, 2002

What a great day of bird watching and book research. Natalie and I set out around 7:30 a.m. heading over the Cascade Mountains toward Cle Elum, the Yakima River Canyon and points south before turning back to the west for a dash over the Cascades on Highway 12 toward home. To make the day more interesting, we decided that this would be our bird-a-thon day for the local Audubon Society - where we get people to pledge either a flat amount or so much per species that we find in a single day. So, we were out to research a few sites for our book, but also to log as many species as we could find along the way.

When the day was done and we walked back into the front door around 11 p.m. tonight we had covered 449 miles, seen 68 species of birds, at least 5 species of butterflies, a handful of mammals including a Mountain Beaver, and around 8:30 p.m. we watched the sun going down behind Mt. Rainier from a pull off along Highway 12 - giving us the opposite view of Washington's grand mountain that we normally have from home.

It wasn't long before we were seeing birds that neither of us has seen before - what is referred to as a "life list" bird, for those bird watchers who build lists. After reaching Cle Elum I wanted to investigate the area where my grandmother's ashes will be scattered soon in the site of the old family homestead in Horse Canyon on the hills above Thorp, Ellensburg, and Cle Elum. Along the road that winds through the farming area we found a Mountain Bluebird, which was a new bird for us, and a bit later while driving a rugged back road we found a Horned Lark in full breeding plumage, looking a lot different than when we last saw them during the winter.

The real highlights of the day came as we stopped in places along Yakima Canyon. Neither of us had been through this scenic area before doing our research today. Along the northern end of the canyon we watched dozens of rafters and fly fishers putting into the river for a float downstream, but the best was yet to come when we pulled off at the Umtanum Creek Recreation Area and took a suspension bridge across the river to reach some trails that wind up into the canyon there.

Umtanum Creek is a great place for bird watching. We saw our first-ever Lazuli Bunting at the top of a tree just a couple hundred yards up the creek, where I was splitting time between chasing butterflies and watching the birds - a Prairie Falcon flying near one cliff edge, a huge Common Raven, and tons of Goldfinches. We didn't walk much of the popular trails due to heat and a need to move on to other sites, but just before we left we watched and listened to another new bird for us, the Yellow Breasted Chat in the photo above (taken through our spotting scope).

We didn't accomplish all that we wanted to on this trip, partially due to my butterfly distractions and the amount of driving between sites. We drove back toward the Cascades north of Toppenish to see our first Lewis's Woodpecker interacting with a lone female Pileated Woodpecker (a common bird for us here in Western Washington) at Fort Simcoe State Park - a fort from the Indian War period of the Oregon Territory, part of which later became Washington - and then dashed out of the park and decided along the way that we would return to visit Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge, since it was already 5 p.m. and there was light rain falling (which made the dry sage brush smell heavenly).

Not satisfied with out species total for the day, we wrapped up with a couple of stops along Highway 12. The first at the Wild Rose Campground gave us glimpses of a host of warblers and other new birds - Veery, Nashville Warbler, and a few Warbling Vireo (which I am sure we have seen before, in the days when IDing the bird was not something I could do so easily). And then as the light was failing, we drove into the woods for a look at what we could find at Clear Lake. I spotted a Barrow's Goldeneye in its nesting grounds as well as at least four Spotted Sandpiper bobbing along the lake shore. We may add Clear Lake to our book since there seem to be a lot of interesting spring, summer, and fall birds in the area.

All in all, what a day! Exhausting...but this has to be the best single day of bird watching that we have had so far this year.

Saturday, May 25, 2002

Natalie and I rose from bed late this morning, and as a result we decided it would make more sense to work on preliminary writing and planning for Birding Washington rather than doing travel and research today. It feels good to get some minor writing and organizational details in order for the book, but in the process we realized that so far we have researched just 27 of the 100 sites we plan to include in the book. Back to the research tomorrow...

Friday, May 24, 2002

I was sitting and working a shift on Lycos this evening when I watched the Cabbage White butterfly in the photo above fly over to one of the blooms on our snowball bush and land, and while I watched it feeding I realized it was staying stationary enough to get a decent digital photo. Butterfly photography can be frustrating, because butterflies seldom stay still or let me get close enough to take a decent shot. This butterfly was more than cooperative though!

Thursday, May 23, 2002

And then there were turtles. Natalie and I started out latest volunteer work this evening with a training session at the South Puget Sound Natural Area near Lakewood, where we are going to spend the next few Thursday evenings doing monitoring of Western Pond Turtles. The Western Pond Turtle is an endangered species in Washington, with just this one population and one other small group of turtles in Klickitat County in Eastern Washington as the only remaining Western Pond Turtles in the wild. The monitoring in Lakewood is an attempt to track the seven female turtles who are large enough to lay eggs this year.

This nature area is a place I didn't even know about. It sits at the top of a hill that is alongside Chambers Creek, encompassing some 97 acres on the site of an old homestead. There is some great habitat here - three small ponds, wetlands, and some open fields. I'm sure that aside from doing radio tracking of the location of the turtles we will also have a great chance to watch birds in the area. Just tonight as we learned how to run the radio for tracking and locating the turtles, we also heard a pair of Virginia Rail, watched lots of Red-winged Blackbirds, had a California Quail land above us in a snag alongside the pond, and found what appeared to be a warbler nest in the brush near one of the ponds.

I didn't have the chance to take a photo today, but I am sure that over the next few weeks I will get some good opportunities in this area.

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

I feel like I have officially crossed the line into nature geekdom. This afternoon, while I was driving down a nearby alley to do some errands I noticed what looked like a Northern Flicker laying in the middle of the alley. I drove past and stopped the car, then got out to find that sure enough it was a female flicker. It looked like it had just been killed. There were no obvious signs of trauma, but it was very recently dead and there was a group of crows carrying on in the tree overhead - I figured that either a hawk or the crows had killed the flicker and left it lying or dropped it to the ground right before I drove through the area.

I carefully scooted the dead bird out of the driving area and decided to leave it there while I ran my errands. If a hawk had dropped it, I wasn't about to interrupt dinner. I figured I would go back to check on the bird when I returned home in an hour or so.

Sure enough, a little more than an hour later I walked down the block and the bird was still there, a little stiffer but none the worse for the wear otherwise. And so I picked it up, placed it on a piece of cardboard and carried it home so that Natalie could get a look at it when she came home. I called Natalie and she suggested putting it in the freezer, and so after I took a couple of digital photos of the beautiful bird, I placed it in the freezer where it still sits tonight. We are hanging onto the bird for a little while, since Natalie wants to look at it more and do some drawings of it, since having such a beautiful creature is such a unique opportunity. And then once we have had it around for a bit, we will turn it over to the Tahoma Audubon Society in case they can find a home for it (TAS already has its own dead male and female Northern Flickers). Who knows...maybe we will have it stuffed.

So, why do I feel like a nature geek? I am not sure. I have been documenting the natural world around me for years, either through writing, photography or both. But even I have to admit that having a dead bird in the freezer takes it to a new level.

The photo above is a close-up shot of the breast of the flicker and the fantastic coloring of the feathers. This shot doesn't do the real bird justice though. The full screen version is very detailed.

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