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Tuesday, December 31, 2002

I thought that yesterday's shot of an Anna's Hummingbird would be my last bird shot of the year, but seeing the first Northern Flicker that I have ever seen balance and be able to feed at our bird feeder was just too much not to grab the camera and take a couple of rushed photos.

We closed out 2002 with about 31 inches of rain for the year, and so far none of it has fallen today. The sun was shining in our North Tacoma yard much of the morning, and though there are clouds rolling into the area as darkness falls this afternoon, the rain isn't predicted to fall until later tonight.

A happy New Year to all!

Monday, December 30, 2002

The light is horrible outside today, but I managed to set up the spotting scope and patiently keep an eye on the snowball bush in our yard in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the Anna's Hummingbird that hangs around here every day. Predictably, no sooner did I have everything set up and the female hummingbird stayed away for an hour or so. But eventually it did show up and give me a chance to take the one shot above. I am shocked that it came out at all in the bad lighting...

Now as darkness falls even more there are Dark-eyed Junco, House Finches, House Sparrows, and a lone Song Sparrow flitting around the bird feeder area. These are all common backyard birds, but they are still interesting to watch in the way they interact, and sometimes their behaviors give clues to other birds in the area. Each time the feeder birds move from the feeder to a nearby denser bushy area all in one mad rush then I look out to see the source since it may be a raptor of some kind. No such luck today though.

Sunday, December 29, 2002

It was cool and rained a little on us during the Kent/Auburn Christmas Bird Count today. The birding was a bit slow. It seemed that a lot of the common waterfowl that would normally be along the Des Moines waterfront and off the shores of Saltwater State Park where we birded were all blown to other locations after the big wind storm that hit here on Friday. When all was said and done, the group that included Natalie and Debra and I tallied 41 species of birds.

Our best bird of the day was a surprise. This afternoon we started birding at Highline Community College, where there were hardly any birds to be found other than American Robin and European Starling. After walking around the campus a bit we piled back into the car to check out a small park nearby and at first glance it looked like we would get skunked again. That changed in a hurry, as we first heard a couple of American Crows calling and chasing an immature Sharp-shinned Hawk that landed in the top of a nearby fir tree. The hawk left abruptly, but the crows continued to circle and call like they were agitated by something. We found the source a moment later, near the bottom of the fir trees where a beautiful Cooper's Hawk flew into the open and gave us great looks from just a short distance away. The Cooper's would have stayed in the tree for a while longer, but I couldn't resist slowly walking closer to get the photo above. I was really aiming for a shot of the hawk in flight, but when I got within 25 feet or so of the bird it took off back through the trees and flew away from me, leaving no chance for another shot.

It was great to have the chance to check out the shoreline birding in an unfamiliar area today! And though we didn't add any new species for our state list for the year and we are likely to end the year with 261 or so species, this was a great way to close out our big year of total immersion in birding. Of course, we are already planning how to start 2003 with a bang by birding somewhere on Jan. 1 - quite likely along Brady Loop and down in Tokeland along Willapa Bay.

Thursday, December 26, 2002

I finally had a chance to scan a few of the slides we had developed from Natalie's Canon A2 camera today, and I am really impressed with how my shot of a Merlin in our yard from a month or so ago turned out. The Merlin landed in the mountain ash tree in the back yard, and I was able to sneak down the hall with the camera that morning and take the shot through the window in the back door. It is great to be able to document a raptor like this in the yard!

Saturday, December 21, 2002

What better way to mark the change of the seasons than by walking a few miles through the winding trails at Point Defiance Park and then later walking to the base of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge during part of the Christmas Bird Count for the Tahoma Audubon Society? That's what Natalie and I did today. In all we walked four or five miles under mostly sunny skies while counting some 40-plus species mostly within the confines of the park.

The highlight of the day was seeing a Hermit Thrush - just the second that we have seen this year - that we found mostly by a fluke while observing some Spotted Towhees along Five Mile Drive. The thrush popped up into view and I immediately said something about it to Natalie. She made the call of it being a Hermit Thrush, and all but one person in our group was there to see it.

After birding the park and then a bit outside the park, Natalie headed home while I went on with Ken and the rest of the group. Our last stop of the day was walking down the hill on the south side of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to see what we could find in the gulch and along the waterfront. We hoped to find rock birds, but we didn't add anything to our list for the day. It was great to find this easy route down to the base of the bridge though!

Our birding day ended at the dinner following the annual bird count, and Natalie and I were surprised tonight with an invitation to join the board of the Tahoma Audubon Society. We will join as a couple, with one vote between the two of us. That works for me!

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

We were on our way to Jana and Jason's for the evening when Natalie and I found the Bald Eagle in the shot above sitting on the pilings in Commencement Bay where Puget Creek runs into the salty waters. The eagle let me get fairly close, but I had to take the shot quickly as a walker and his dog were about to scare the white-headed predator away. Sure enough, moments after snapping the shot the eagle was airborne. Meanwhile, further out in the bay I could see large white birds flocking somewhat like shorebirds, moving in large numbers from the west to the east across the bay. It wasn't until later tonight that I figured out these were not shorebirds but instead a large number of Bonaparte's Gulls...

Sunday, December 8, 2002

The book research goes on today with a visit to the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Natalie and I ventured to the mountains Sunday to see what birds are still hanging around in the snow-free higher elevations in the blast zone of the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. What did we find? Well, under mostly sunny skies with a steady 20 mph breeze blowing off Coldwater Lake, we were surprised to find any birds at all.

We found no birds hanging around the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center, but things picked up on the trails around Coldwater Lake. First we walked the Birth of a Lake Trail, with views of the white caps rolling across the lake and toward us on the southern shores of the lake. I took the photo above of Mt. St. Helens from the boardwalk trail on Coldwater Lake. Birds we found on the lake included:

5 Bufflehead (4 females, 1 male)
2 Grebes ... they appeared to be Eared Grebe from their size, but they didn't stay on top of the water long and they were hard to make out between the white caps...
15 Dark-eyed "Oregon" Junco
3 Song Sparrow
2 Common Raven
1 Winter Wren
1 Spotted Towhee

We also walked part of the Hummocks Trail, and we found a small flock of Chickadee moving through the parking area as we set out, mixed in with more juncos.

Even though we have been reading about the lack of snow in the mountains leading up to last weekend, it was still shocking to see no snow whatsoever on any of the hills around Mt. St. Helens. The mountain itself and its glaciers still hold snow and ice, but none of the ridges surrounding the mountain were capped with white. And temperatures must not be getting too cold up at 4,000 feet in the South Cascades because we heard at least three frogs calling in the sunshine yesterday - two along the shores of Coldwater Lake and one to the north of the Hummocks Trail.

Other birds seen on our Sunday trip included 15 Red-tailed Hawks (9 on the trip down from Tacoma, 6 on the way home as darkness fell), and there were two Bald Eagles along the Toutle River near Kid Valley as we drove back down to I-5. There were also two gulls on the Toutle River in the same area as the eagles. And as we drove past Silver Lake we saw one American Kestrel, a pair of Hooded Merganser, two Common Loon, and a few Pied Billed Grebe.

During our trip I got to wondering if others birded Coldwater Lake and have seen grebes in the late fall? I am really curious what grebe species we were most likely seeing yesterday, since most grebes this time of the year should be out of the mountains.

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

After capturing a small bit of the sunrise yesterday, I simply had to venture up onto the roof over the back portion of our house to snap a few shots of a bright orange and pink and red sunset that lit up the southwestern sky for what seemed like forever this afternoon. I wish I would have had a better angle to get a shot of the pink hues on Mt. Rainier, which I can see from our roof and from the window in the loft. Unfortunately, a lot of wires obscure The Mountain from up on our roof, so the photo wouldn't have been nearly as spectacular as the view of the sunset.

It was a slow day for birding in our yard, with just the usual suspects of Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, House Finches and House Sparrows hanging around most of the day. No raptors in sight on this day...

Monday, November 25, 2002

I couldn't resist the urge to walk over to 36th Street hill, just about a half mile from our house, to see if I could watch the sun rise on this crisp, frosty Puget Sound morning. And sure enough, after rushing over there I was able to hang out and weather all of the gawking commuters driving past in order to see a great sunrise alongside Mt. Rainier!

Thursday, November 21, 2002

I've been distracted this morning by another raptor sighting in the yard south of our house. I was working in the living room and glanced over in time to see the flash of a raptor go past the window, and as I saw the small birds in the snowball bush dropping down into the cover at the dense center of the bush, I was sure reassured that it must have been a raptor that passed by. Sure, enough, when I looked over at the ash tree in the corner of the back yard there was a large Merlin sitting there!

I carefully stepped back from the window and rushed to grab the Canon EOS A2 camera to shoot some slides, and I was lucky enough to have the dark Merlin stay in the tree for me to squeeze off four or five shots! Hopefully they will come out despite the relative darkness caused by this foggy morning and the fact that I was shooting through the windows to get the shots.

It was interesting to note that while the Merlin was in the ash tree, one Crow made a flyby past it, but most of the crows seemed disinterested. Usually crows mob any raptors in the neighborhood, so it was interesting to see them leave this Merlin alone. I wonder if the fact that the Merlin was so dark throughout, with the exception of some light coloring in the breast (the bird was turned away from me the whole time, so I didn't get a clear look at its breast) combined with the fog this morning made the crows less interested? After all, it nearly looked like another crow from a quick glance...

Sunday, November 10, 2002

We capped a weekend of birding in Southwest Washington today by visiting three sites - Dike Access Road near Woodland, Vancouver Lake and the Shillapoo Wildlife Area, and sections of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. A surprising highlight on this intermittently gray and rainy day was finding another White-tailed Kite, shown sitting on a fence post in the photo above. We drove north of Vancouver Lake and saw this bird hunting over a field in the Shillapoo Wildlife Area, while hunters drove past us in search of Pheasant during this hunting season. After seeing two of the relatively hard-to-find White-tailed Kites yesterday afternoon at the Julia Butler Hansen Refuge for the Columbia White Tailed Deer, it was a pleasant surprise to see another here.

Other than the kite, the skies were full of other raptors. Red-tailed Hawks were everywhere, and we stopped and got a good look at a Peregrine Falcon before it flew off to perch elsewhere. The most numerous raptors in this area bordering the Columbia River near Vancouver, Wash., were American Kestrel. In one location we watched two kestrel hunting while a third sat and watched the show from its perch in a tree alongside the road.

This wildlife area is also full of Great Blue Heron like the one in the photo above, which I took with our digital camera through the spotting scope.

Another group of birds we had hoped to see but didn't expect where the stately Sandhill Cranes. I took the shot above of a small part of a flock of 40-plus Sandhill Cranes feeding in a field in the northern part of the Shillapoo Wildlife Area.

Monday, October 21, 2002

Natalie and I took a walk along Ruston Way today and took in the leaves falling along the well-travelled sidewalk. Some of those bright red and orange leaves are in the shot above...

Sunday, October 20, 2002

The shot above is of Blue Lake in the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area in north central Washington...

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Back on the road again this weekend for a trip over Rainy Pass and Washington Pass and then down into the Methow Valley before heading up to Loup Loup Pass for more birding and camping. We set out a little later this morning than I had hoped, but that is normal for us. It was about noon when we stopped to check out one of the viewing sites for the Skagit River Bald Eagle Festival, which takes place in the winter, and aside from seeing a single Bald Eagle sitting in the branches of a tree across the river from the North Cascades Highway, the little church on the other side of the road caught my eye. Natalie and I crossed the road and snapped shots of the fall foliage behind the white church.

This will be our last passage over the North Cascades this year, so we were out of the car at a couple of stops to explore a bit. We simply have to get up to this part of the state more once our book is done. There are great photographic possbilities in the area, as well as hiking.

We dropped from the high passes into the Methow Valley in early afternoon and spent about an hour driving around the Methow Wildlife Area. The last time we visited here there was snow on the ground, so it was interesting to see it in the late fall, with bright yellows, oranges, and reds painting the trees. Birding wasn't great though, since this is hunting season and the woods are teaming with hunters. At one point along the drive we saw a California Quail on a fencepost and I stopped and had Natalie get out to scare the bird down into the tall grasses, where it stood more of a chance against the hunters.

We had a great evening as nightfall approached. We made it to the Loup Loup Campground around 4 p.m., and after doing some birding in the campground we decided to try to make the drive north along a rugged forest road in order to find a campground in Conconully. We didn't make it. The rough roads and scenery kept us driving too slowly, and so around 6 p.m. we pulled off the road in a clearing along Salmon Creek where we used the rugged site for free overnight camping. As we were driving down into the valley that holds Salmon Creek, Natalie snapped the photo above of the sun going down behind us and highlighting the bright yellow larch trees on the opposite hillside.

Saturday, October 12, 2002

It is a rare Saturday this year that finds us close to home, but today we had good reason for making an exception. Robert Michael Pyle gave a talk this morning at the Tacoma Public Library, and I wanted to hear his comments there and have another chance to say hello. Besides, I needed to visit my parents in North Seattle to finally take care of filing last year's taxes.

I had no idea that listening to Bob Pyle's talk would lead to Natalie and I having lunch with him and discussing butterflies, my state record for the Queen butterfly that I saw in our front yard in 2000, and the nature of the book writing business these days. It was great to get to know Bob a bit more and to hear about how he works his schedule to fit in book tour stops and such. There were nuggets of information that Natalie and I will have to consider when we set up our own book tour for Birding Washington.

We topped off the day by visiting my parents this evening and going through the painful process of seeing how my self-employment and my best guestimate of pre-paying taxes for 2001 worked out in the end. Thankfully, this time it was good news.

We may get back on the nature trail tomorrow, since we are contemplating a trip to do research down at Mt. St. Helens. But we will see how I feel when I wake in the morning. I have been battling a headache all day...

Sunday, October 6, 2002

In the morning we saw a few good birds here in Maryhill State Park, including a Golden Eagle soaring in the distance over the basalt columns to the north of the park, a Peregrine Falcon sitting on the top of a telephone pole in the same area, and a number of Yellow-rumped Warblers in the brush along the exit to the park.

Our best birding of the day was along Balch Road near Lyle, where we stopped to get a look at the Acorn Woodpecker that we missed earlier this year when visiting Klickitat County. Northern Flicker were everywhere, and we could hear the occassional call of Acorn Woodpecker, but we didn't see one until it flew overhead as we sat alongside the road above a pond that held Pied-billed Grebe, Wood Duck, and Mallard. Other highlights along Balch Road included watching two Belted Kingfisher chasing each other and calling loudly as they weaved in and out of the oak trees along a hillside and watching a Merlin in hot pursuit of a smaller prey bird that it lost in the trees before landing in a treetop near the cemetary.

Other Balch Road birds:

- numerous and loud Scrub Jay
- Stellar's Jay
- Song Sparrow
- numerous Spotted Towhee

We wrapped up our weekend by driving FS 23 from Trout Lake up past Mt. Adams and down the Cispus River watershed to Randle before returning to Tacoma. We made stops at Takhlakh Lake, Chain of Lakes, and Olallie Lake where we heard numerous Chickadee and Dark-eyed Junco, as well as a Pileated Woodpecker. I also spotted a Clark's Nutcracker in the treetops at Takhlakh Lake as we saw Wood Duck and Red-breasted Nuthatch throughout the area. There was a small group of what appeared to be Goldeneye on Olallie Lake, though they were too far away to ensure they were late-to-leave Barrow's Goldeneye.

Great birding and great scenery for a fall weekend. Our views of Mt. Adams reflecting in the waters of Tahklakh Lake were priceless!

On a final note, not surprisingly the numbers of butterfly species on the wing are dwindling. I did snap of closeup photo of a California Tortoiseshell on the gravel along Balch Road, and we saw more tortoiseshell along FS 23 near Mt. Adams. There were also a diminished number of Orange Sulphur butterflies on the wing near Mabton on Hwy. 22.

Saturday, October 5, 2002

Today was the first day of our two-day trip to the Columbia Gorge, and I snapped the shot above of a crumbling barn near Randle, Wash. just before we dashed over White Pass to reach the Yakima Valley and the head south to the Columbia River. Here are some birding notes I made for the day:

The main highlight of our drive to reach the town of Patterson and the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge was watching dozens of raptors - mostly Red-tailed Hawks - migrating and hunting over the fields on the high plateau between Prosser and Patterson. If you want to see a vast volume of raptors and how they interact with each other while hunting, this is a great spot, and the road is wide enough to safely pull over and watch the birds. Along with the Red-tails, we saw one rufous morph as well as a couple of Swainson's Hawks moving south.

There isn't a lot going on at Umatilla yet. The large numbers of migrating waterfowl are a few weeks away, but we still managed to see a handful of Rock Wren in the rocky habitat and three White Pelican out near mid-stream in the Columbia River. Other sightings included:

- Meadowlark singing from the top of a pole at the Whitcomb Unit
- large flocks of mixed Brewers' Blackbird, European Starling, and Red-winged Blackbird
- 10 American Wigeon in the inner pond on the drive to Crow Butte State Park
- American Coot

It should be noted that Crow Butte State Park is closed indefinitely due to budget restrictions. It closed on Oct. 1. This is the third state park in SE Washington that we have seen closed due to budget problems, this despite the new $5 parking fee that is soon to be required at all state parks. Interesting that the parks folks closed the parks in SE Washington, where parks are few and far between...

We made our way west along the Columbia Gorge Saturday night and camped in gusting winds at Maryhill State Park.

Thursday, October 3, 2002

Two times in Poulsbo in less than a week? Yes. I ventured back to the Scandinavian themed town that Natalie and I first visited and profiled in a chapter in the Insider's Guide to the Olympic Peninsula today to browse a bit with M. And I couldn't resist snapping another shot of the harbor and the great reflections of the boats on the water.

Tuesday, October 1, 2002

Mt. Rainier looms over the Puyallup River valley and in the near distance over downtown Tacoma in this shot taken outside the Kickstand Cafe and The Grand Cinema, where we watched a movie this afternoon.

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