Subject: Re: Birding in Forks, La Push, and O.N.P?
Date: Jun 13 10:09:59 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Chris Hill wrote:

>Any suggestions for birding sites on the western Olympic Peninsula this
>time of year? (snip) the birding has been pretty slow where I've
>been - clearcuts full of song sparrows, woods with a few warbler species
>and all the winter wrens, robins, and golden-crowned kinglets anyone could
>ever need. Are there any "hotspots" out that way, any local specialties
>I should look for, or any general habitats particularly worth visiting?

I've found breeding bird diversity to be surprisingly low on the Olympic
Peninsula, almost anywhere you go, west, north, or east side. Neotropical
migrants in particular are much less common there than in the Cascades.
For example, I spent a day on the Deer Park Road, from top to bottom, last
year on the first weekend in July and saw and heard almost no migrants at
all, even though resident birds such as Golden-crowned Kinglets,
Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and Dark-eyed Juncos were quite common. A
single Orange-crowned was the only warbler detected. I assume this is
because there just isn't the flush of summer insects that occurs in drier
and/or warmer parts of the world. "Wet and cool" doesn't describe insect
habitat to me (as I wrote before, western Cascadia isn't a place for an
entomologist). The residents are presumably well-adapted to searching out
what prey is present, whereas migrants depend more on a summer flush of
easy-to-get insects.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416