Christmas Bird Counts in NCW

In our four-county region of North Central Washington there are at least seven Christmas Bird Counts for birders of all skill levels to enjoy. This is an entirely volunteer-driven citizen science effort. Your rewards for getting up early include seeing and learning about the wintering birds of our area, camaraderie with other birders over coffee and throughout the potentially, cold day, and usually a warm meal when darkness falls to share sightings and stories! And if you love to go owling, or just want to learn more about owls, there are usually some hardy folks who will be up in the very early morning cold and darkness looking and listening for owls! How much more fun can a person have in December and early January?

Want to know more? Here are the local counts with information to help you get involved with them.

Leavenworth: December 17.
Contact Karen Haire karenhaire@nwi.net or Gretchen Rohde, gretchenrohde@me.com. CBC counters will get together at Barn Beach Reserve to warm up and share bird stories and enjoy a potluck dinner at 4:30 p.m.

Bridgeport: December 17.
Contact Meredith Spencer merdave@homenetnw.net or 686-7551. Meet at 7:00 a.m. at the Brewster McDonalds. Afterwards, enjoy a lasagna potluck at Mike and Leslie’s house at 1530 Douglas Avenue in Bridgeport.

Twisp: December 18.

Contact Leahe Swayze. leahe@methownet.com or 997-2549. Meet at the Hoot Owl Café at 123 North Glover Street in Twisp. Those who would like to eat breakfast should arrive by 6:30 a.m. (they have a good menu selection), while those who are ready to count should arrive by 7 a.m. A potluck dinner, followed by count tally, will be held at 5:30 p.m. at 521 Burgar Street. (corner of Burgar Street & Peters Road), Twisp. Leahe will provide soup — something with beans.

Grand Coulee: December 21

Contact David St. George. dstgeorge@TNC.ORG Participants will meet at Flo’s Café, 316 Spokane Way, Grand Coulee at 7 a.m. They will break up into four to six groups to cover a diverse variety of habitats from the large reservoirs, pine/fir woods, sagebrush, agricultural lands and small towns that make up the count circle. Maps and field sheets will be provided. Meet again at 4:30 p.m. at Pepper Jacks Bar & Grill, 113 Midway Avenue in Grand Coulee to compile the day’s numbers.

Chelan: December 29

Contact Steve Easley. seasley@nwi.net The plans for the Chelan CBC are identical to the past few years: Meet at 7:00 a.m. at the Apple Cup Cafe - 804 East Woodin Avenue - for breakfast and to receive assignments. At 4:45 p.m meet in the banquet room of the Apple Cup Cafe for dinner and to share results of the count. Keep in mind that whoever covers the lake in front of Campbell’s Lodge will have to ignore the swans - they’re plastic!

Wenatchee: January 1

Contact Dan Stephens. dstephens@wvc.edu or 782-4890 or 679-4706. The 50th Wenatchee CBC will be Saturday January 1st. Following the count birders will meet at the Nature Conservancy Office for a Chili feed. Please contact Dan before the count to be assigned a group and area.

Omak/Okanogan: January 2

Contact Heather Findlay heather@eaglesun.net 429-8167 or Gordon Kent at 422-6116 The count will start off at Todd and Heather’s house at 2050 James Avenue in Okanogan at 6:45 a.m. Birders may see various woodpeckers, Red Crossbills, perhaps Pygmy, White- and or Red-Breasted Nuthatches, grebes and maybe Chukars, Horned Larks and Snow Buntings. Counters are welcome to join for all or part of the day. For the diehards, when Gordon is finally dragged away from his spotting scope, when it begins to get dark, around 4:30 or so, it’s back to Todd and Heather’s for a chili feed and tallying up lists and sharing some stories from a fun day of birding!

Editor’s note: I really would LOVE to have some photos and stories from the Christmas Bird Counts to share with our Wild Phlox readers. Please keep that in mind as you enjoy your cold day of counting birds for Citizen Science!

June 20th bird walk

Only two of us turned out for the bird walk on Monday of this week. It was probably the nicest morning of the year, weather-wise. Perfect for a walk. We decided to go to the MVSTA Suspension Bridge parking area on the Community Trail and walk down valley towards the cottonwood forest in hopes of seeing some Redstarts and other specialties of that habitat. Neither one of us is good with calls of vireos and redstarts so it made hunting them down pretty difficult. The river is still running very high and there were no American Dippers in sight.

One of our choicest views was that of the Lady-slipper Orchid in a big patch next to the trail. Wild roses were also numerous and fragrant.

Here is our list of bird species.

Turkey Vulture - seen while driving

American Kestrel - seen while driving

Mourning Dove

Black Swift - seen while driving

Rufous Hummingbird

Northern Flicker

Western Wood-Pewee

Unidentified Empidonax

Common Raven

Violet-green Swallow

Black-capped Chickadee

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Veery

Swainson's Thrush

American Robin

Gray Catbird

Cedar Waxwing

Yellow Warbler

Spotted Towhee

Chipping Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Black-headed Grosbeak

Red-winged Blackbird

Cassin's Finch

Pine Siskin

Birds and bird trips

Are you seeing any interesting birds at your feeders these days? Over on Harrier Hill they have a male Evening Grosbeak along with their House Finches and Goldfinches. In Pine Forest a while back, I heard they had all three nuthatches and a White-headed Woodpecker and Clarks Nutcrackers coming to their feeders. Here on our little hill, I've seen Northern Shrikes a few times since the weather got cold and the Steller's Jays are coming around regularly. Yesterday Ken was outside and heard a call from the power line and found a Northern Pygmy Owl observing the place. I was able to get a few snapshots when it flew to the snag on the other side of the house.

It mostly just presented the back side of its head with the fake eyes.

On December 12th Dan Stephens will be leading a waterfowl field trip, starting in Wenatchee and going up the Columbia on the Chelan County side to Bridgeport and then down the river on Douglas County side. I plan to meet the group in Pateros and join them for part of the day. Anyone else want to carpool from the Methow down to the Columbia?

This is a good warmup for the Christmas Bird Counts that get underway on December 14th with Bridgeport leading the way. Another opportunity to carpool from the Methow and Wenatchee. Meredith would love to get a bunch of folks up there. It's a great count. In past years I've seen a Gyrfalcon, Redpolls and also the count's only Wild Turkey! The Twisp CBC has been moved up to December 16th so be sure and change your calendars for that one. Karen tells me Leavenworth is either the 15th or 16th. Grand Coulee with David St George is December 21st. Chelan is the 30th. Okanogan and Wenatchee are both on January 2nd. You can look at http://www.wos.org/ to find a complete list of CBC's around the state.

February 5th, Dan Stephens will lead his annual trip from Wenatchee to the Waterville Plateau. Always something interesting with possible Snowy Owls and Snow Buntings and other winter specialties.

Big Valley Bird Walk

Yesterday, 8 of us met at the MVSTA parking lot for one of NCW Audubon's summer bird walks. Weather was at long last, perfect - warm and calm and dry. It seems that summer has finally arrived. We car pooled to the Big Valley section of the Methow Wildlife Area in hopes of observing Veerys, Lazuli Buntings, various vireos and American Redstarts, among others. None of us were 'experts' and we are all trying to learn the less common bird songs and calls of the migrants who nest in our area. To this end, two of us brought our electronic devices to help with identification. These birds are often hidden in the canopy of cottonwoods, aspens and water birch so the song may be all the observation we get.

Ladyslipper Orchid

In addition to birds, we saw many wildflowers including ladyslipper orchids, tiger lilies, immense cow parsnips, northern bedstraw, Canada violet (a white violet - new to all of us), and many others. The non-stop spring rains have created a lush landscape of four foot tall grasses and bracken fern over our heads.

Cow Parsnip

Tiger Lily

I was glad to have flowers to photograph since the birds were not nearly so cooperative. Here are the species we observed, some of them were heard and not seen.

Spotted Sandpiper

Mourning Dove

Calliope Hummingbird
Red-naped Sapsucker - appeared to be nesting pair although we did not find the nest
Downy Woodpecker - we observed male and female feeding young at a nest
Hairy Woodpecker
Western Wood-Pewee
Hammond's Flycatcher
Unidentified Empidonax
Cassin's Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
American Crow
Common Raven
Black-capped Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
House Wren
Veery
Swainson’s Thrush
American Robin
Varied Thrush
Gray Catbird
Cedar Waxwing
Yellow Warbler
MacGillivray's Warbler
Spotted Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lazuli Bunting
Red-winged Blackbird
Brewer's Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Bullock's Oriole
Cassin's Finch


Total number of species observed: 33

Next NCW Audubon Methow Bird Walk is July 6, meet at MVSTA parking lot 7:30 am

Chance (sometimes) favors the prepared birder, or WTH was that?

What a great time of year to be out with a pair of binoculars! What ever drove me to come inside to this stupid computer...well, more on that in a moment.

Migration is in full swing and the activity level out there is frenetic. It seems that every bird is either trying to gather more food for the journey northward, or organize a nest and corner a mate for a short stay here. And it's a great time to be on the lookout for rarities, if that's your MO.

I was driving home to Twisp on Tuesday, following the Methow River home. Just upstream from the townlet of Methow, I glanced down the embankment into the river. The river may already be down from its high mark, a discouraging thought, but there is still a lot of water coming down the valley.

What I saw at 55 mph was a pair of Canadian Geese (those are the ones that go "honk, eh") bobbing in the water against the far bank, and a pair of birds in the middle of the river that looked exactly like...Long-billed Curlews? Marbled Godwits? Bristle-thighed Curlews?

To the relief of most of my passengers, I rarely turn around for birds. This time I got turned around (twice) and off the road just in time to see the Canada Geese shoot the rapids, and no sign of the mystery shorebirds. At 55 mph you catch so few details, and your mind tries hard to fill in the blanks. They were big--at least the size of small ducks, but more slender. Their plumage was mottled or "marbled," heads small and necks long in proportion to body size. Any details of the bills were lost against the dark water.

Occam's razor suggests the most parsimonious explanation. Nothing more than a pair of female Mallards, or at best Green-winged Teal, glimpsed too quickly to capture anything but a tangle of field marks and then elevated in my mind to a rarity. Now I just need to get over it and move on.

This morning I took a quick trip to the Beaver Pond at Sun Mountain. I had my binoculars, but I had ulterior motives, hoping our spring rains had encouraged some tasty fungi to emerge. No such luck. But it was a glorious morning and I got good looks at Ring-necked Ducks and Hooded Mergansers on the pond. There seemed to be an abundance of Red-naped Sapsuckers, and a few Orange-crowned Warblers moving through. Nothing unusual, at least till I got back to the truck.

I had parked on the flat above the pond where the Corral Trail crosses the road, hoping to put myself into Blue/Dusky Grouse terrain. I heard one, a single distant hoot of derision at my expectations. I parked facing up valley, and was admiring the view of snowy Mt. Gardner when a large bird launched off the ridge and took to the air. I figured it was one of the Ospreys that perennially nest at the pond. In my binoculars the long neck of the bird and rounded wings dismissed the idea of the Osprey, and I tried hard to turn the bird into a Great Blue Heron, another likely pond denizen.

A long time ago I spent two years chasing Sandhill Cranes until I convinced Utah State University to give me a Master's Degree so I could stop harassing the birds and get on with my life. Failing to turn the bird over the Beaver Pond into anything else, I finally had to acknowledge it was a Sandhill Crane. It disappeared below the tree line and settled on the far side of the pond.

Cranes are rare in the Methow. A respectable migration of the birds passes just to the east of us, heading up the Okanogan River to Canada and Alaska. But they rarely stray westward. We have some decent breeding habitat for cranes, and it would be wonderful if this one had a mate and decided to stay. The parsimonious approach suggests otherwise, while a birder can always hang on to hope.

Birds are returning!

Despite weather that is at times, windy, sunny, warm, cold, and snowing, all within an hour or so, birds are returning to North Central Washington.

Tuesday I had to be in Wenatchee for a day long Vet appointment and so I took my kayak and I saw a pair of Osprey at the mouth of the Wenatchee River. It was a nice reward for the trip.

At our house in the Methow on Friday, a Rufous Hummingbird arrived and yesterday it was joined by Calliope hummers. In Twisp there is an unusual hummingbird that is puzzling even to the experts. It could be an Anna's.

Ken said he saw five Turkey Vultures here on Tuesdsay and suddenly they are everywhere!

Dusky Grouse have been displaying on hillsides for a couple of weeks now.

What interesting birds are you seeing?