Tweets,

Many of you may be enjoying a four-day holiday, but Kevin Aanerud, David
Swayne, Ken Jacobson, and I spent part or all of this past weekend in the
Tacoma Watershed on the upper Green River; hot "as a snake's-ass in a
wagon rut" Saturday, but cool and wet Sunday." I camped out overnight
with my wife's dog on the crest along a new logging road where the Cascade
Crest Trail used to run, northeast of Windy Pass, and hiked the as yet
undisturbed stretch of the trail from Green Pass to Blowout Pass. I was
pleased to find not only Chipping Sparrows singing at several points along
the crest and one fine Mountain Bluebird in an old burn, but at least five
singing Cassin's Finches. Curiously, three of them were in "female
plumage"; saw just one male-plumaged bird. Presumably the one-year old
males try to set up camp at the edges of the normal range. They were all
between 5000 and 5400 feet elevation. Sunday at Lester Dave Swayne and I
found many Chipping Sparrows (at more like 1500 feet elevation) and Purple
Finches. Lester has a population of 1 human; it was once a thriving
railroad hitching point for the climb up through the Cascade tunnel.
However, it's claim to be a town is substantiated by our find of two
Starlings there, the only ones we saw all weekend. Other interesting
finds include two broods of Harlequin Ducks on the Green River and an
active Osprey nest just below the dam at Howard Hanson Reservoir. We saw
a pair of Common Loons on the reservoir but were told that their nesting
failed due to predation on the eggs. Also found two female Kestrels in
one clear cut area( about one mile apart). Would this indicate two pairs
in the area or would it be more likely to be young of the year? I also
noticed that above 5000 feet on the crest nothing but Yellow-rumped
Warblers, while down at 4500 and below Townsend's Warblers were abundant
and Yellow-rumpeds scarce. Might Yellow-rumped largely replace
Townsend's in coniferous forests above 5000 feet?

Hope you had a productive birding weekend.

Gene Hunn.