Subject: Skokomish Old-Growth Birds
Date: Jun 20 07:00:36 1997
From: "Jon. Anderson and Marty Chaney" - festuca at olywa.net


Hi folks,

Took the day off yesterday to assist the USFS/Audubon/Partners in Flight people with a point-count in the old-growth over along the south fork of the Skokomish River and Rule Creek. We do 10 sites, 8-minute counts at each site, with the sites at least 125m apart.

The road in along the southwest side of the river washed out a few years back and hasn't been repaired since, so Frank Davis from the Forest Serv. took Noelle Nordstrom and I up along the north side of the river, then we walked in (in the dark) across the river (on a foot-bridge that's tilted at about 50 degrees from level...) and to the sites, in about an hour.

We started counting just before 5am, and saw/heard the following at the 'points':

Winter Wren 17
Varied Thrush 15
Hermit Thrush 3
Swainson's Thrush 2
Pacific-slope Flycatcher 11
Hairy Woodpecker 7
Golden-crowned Kinglet 4
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Chestnut-bk Chickadee 15
Red-breasted Nuthatch 2
Brown Creeper 1
Western Tanager 3
Red Crossbill 7 - flying over
Rufous Hummingbird 1

Fourteen species and 89 individuals seems pretty low for 10 stations on this count. Missed were any warblers, jays or vireos. On the walk in, Swainson's Thrush were singing in the areas along the river/creeks, but it seems that past years had more SWTH activity at the stations. Tanager calls seemed sparse, as well. Wasn't someone else on the list commenting that Swainson's Thrush seemed few and far between this year?

A Pileated Woodpecker quit calling just before the 8-minute timing started at one station, and we heard another on the walk out. Other birds that I 'missed' at the stations, that we heard or saw on the way out or between stations were Vaux' Swifts, Hammond's Flycatcher, Steller's Jay, Raven, and Juncos. Saw a number of other Rufous Hummers on the way back, as well as N Rough-winged Swallows along the river.

The only warblers I heard were some Wilson's back at the landing where we parked on the east side of the river down in the second-growth.