Hi Tweets,

Janet and I managed to car camp this weekend at the Soda Springs
campground along the Bumping River, on the east side of Chinook Pass.

We had just returned from a short excursion when Janet noticed a
woodpecker on one of the pines at our site. It was a female Black-backed
Woodpecker, our first! Very nice.

The next day we were making our annual trek up Mt. Aix when a male
Three-toed Woodpecker tapped his presence at about 6500' elev. Just our
second of that species.

It was very windy on the ridge where we've usually seen Rock Wrens so no
luck there. These were mentioned during a Tweeter's thread a while back.
Janet did spot a mountain goat. After we trained our bin's on it there
turned out to be 37 of them.

Finally, as we were slowly hiking out Saturday I heard a little peep.
Pishing has never worked for me and I can't whistle a hoot. I tried
making some kissing sounds. The Chestnut-sided Chickadee came closer.
More of them started arriving. Soon there was 9 chickadees, a couple of
Gold-crowned Kinglets, and some Red-breasted Nuthatches all in the
small pine just a few feet from me. It was a joyous experience.

Cheers,

Dan Victor, Seattle, WA <dvictor at u.washington.edu>
Tweeters = http://weber.u.washington.edu/~dvictor/