Last Friday, when my wife Clarice and I left for a few days birding in
Eastern Washington, Tweeters had a note from Dennis about the slowdown of
postings; Tuesday on our return we found 190 messages backed up and whole new
threads on cats and on chickadees. Is there room for a simple, low-key,
report on looking at birds?

We stayed at Swauk campground for the weekend, going up to Red Top on Friday
evening and seeing mainly Townsend's solitaire, red crossbills, a redtail and
a hermit thrush. To throw two more cents at the chickadee thread, the
chestnut-backed chickadees at Swauk campground seemed to me to be living
among "wetter" condition conifers, true the dominant species is ponderosa
pine, but the birds were hanging out along the creek in fir, spruce, and
hemlock.

Saturday we went to the large black talus slope south of diamond head, and
Sunday back to Red Top lookout, with Anderson's hawk migration class (the one
Fred Bird met on Sunday--and indeed Dennis of course guessed right as to the
identity of Bud's hawk spotting friend). With the high breaking up out here,
the wind was straight from the east, which is not ideal at diamond head
because the thermal creating talus slope is on the east side of the drainage
and an east wind blows the birds away from the slope. This was our first
hawk migration look see in Washington, and (maybe because of the weather
change) not the spectacular sort I remember from my early days in the Rio
Grande Valley (swarms of circling buteos) but interesting none the less. Bud
is a good teacher, and this trip finally makes me feel comfortable
identifying flying sharpies and Coopers'. We were all urging a circling
redtail to land at the banding blind when a bullet of a female sharpie zapped
through our binocular fields and nailed the starling bait, so Clarice and I
got to watch the weighing, banding, and so forth-- a fun first. Bud also
pointed out how hawks seem to be going through mating behaviour now due
apparently to the day length being the same as in spring equinox, and when
you start looking for that sort of thing you really see it-- lots of redtail
swooping and showing off. Monday we saw two sharpies doing cartwheels, each
as if at the end of a spoke of a vertical wheel exactly 180 degrees apart,
then one on top would pause till the one below caught up and met, and they
would swoop off in opposite horizontal directions. Is this the same mating
sort of behaviour, or just enjoying the wind?

Monday we went to Wenas Campground, which I have only been to once before,
last spring (before labor day) when it was full of archery types. Someone has
engineered a culvert pipe through the beaver dam that was diverting the creek
across the road at the campground entrance, and has added a lot of coarse
rock fill there. Wonder how long that will last-- the beavers were mighty
busy further upstream making a new dam near one of the campsites. Also a
lot of trees in the area marked with fresh blue paint, does this portend
logging? There were no other people at all there Monday, but there were
pasturing cattle, which was kind of erie-- reminded us of camping in Mexico
where you are always in someone's pasture and always wonder how much the
owner is watching you. It was wonderful that way, though, because it was
completely silent except for birds. Night full of stars and no traffic
sounds.

Lots of common birds there Tuesday morning tanking up on bugs. Big flocks of
yellow rumps and one very large group of western bluebirds, that were so
thick on the ground they looked like robins in the spring on a wet city park
lawn. Got good looks at a male sharpie that may have been feeling too good
about "false spring" because he took on a group of five Steller's jays. I was
watching them quarrel on the top of a dead tree when the hawk swooped in and
landed in the middle, then started doing quick tight little loops around
branches trying to snatch the back of one or another jay's head. They were
almost as big as he was and were not about to give ground, but he kept it up
for quite a while. Otherwise lots of red and white breasted nuthatches,
mountain chickadees (pines) and black capped (aspen groves), red crossbills,
flickers, evening grosbeaks, pine siskins, sharpshins and Coopers', little
gray unknowable flycatchers, and other usual things. Only one red-naped
sapsucker, and one downie, but we saw our first female white headed
woodpecker, which was a bit of thrill. Just a good weekend before driving
back to the rain.
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Name: Jerry Broadus
jbroadus at seanet.com
901-16th. St S.W.
Puyallup, Wa. 98371
206-845-3156
Time: 20:18:56