Fellow tweets,

After several good WOS-related meetings on Saturday on the westside for me
and heavy duty Xmas shopping at Bellevue Square for Susan, we returned to
the foggy sump of Yakima via Mt. Rainier. Lots of excitement there as
swarms of mountain rescue folks-planes, helicopters and ground
searchers-which were involved in a search for a photographer who
disappeared Tuesday on a trail on the parks eastside.

We headed up the Shriner Peak trail in the southeastern part of the park .
This trail is on south slopes for most of the way. There was no snow on the
ground, though it snowed briefly. Winter is late up there this year, but
can it be far off?

We noted 13 species of birds, pretty lean, but migration is virtually over.
It's evidently a lean year for cone crops generally in these parts, so
there aren't many seed eaters this season. And, birds that forage on the
ground have figured out it's best to vacate these parts.

I thought it interesting that all the small flocks of Chestnut-backed
Chickadees we encountered were in Douglas fir forests bordering openings
with alder thickets. The birds were bark and trunk gleaning fairly near the
ground in both the firs and alders. In this area at least, the chickadees
here have apparently forsaken the dark coniferous forests they prefer
during the breeding season and moved to these atypical habitats (except on
the San Juan Islands where they are the only chickadee and they commonly
occupy mixed coniferous and deciduous habitats).

Clark's Nutcrackers were common at mid-elevations where the only
conspicuous cones present were those of Douglas firs. Now that I think
about it, there were a few western white pines in the area. Wouldn't seeds
of both these trees be an unusual food source for a nutcracker?

At higher elevations, we watched two Evening Grosbeaks picking away at the
mostly shed cones at the top of a particularly beautiful noble fir, truly a
grand tree of mid-mountain elevations in these forests. Siskins were also
common, but we found no crossbills or other finches, even at higher parts
of the subalpine zone.

Accipiter sp. (Cooper's or N. Goshawk)-1
Red-tailed Hawk-2
Pileated Woodpecker-1
Steller's Jay-4
Clark's Nutcracker-5+
Common Raven-2
Chestnut-backed Chickadee-30+
Red-breasted Nuthatch-5
Golden-crowned Kinglet-20
Winter Wren-1
Varied Thrush-1
Pine Siskin-75
Evening Grosbeak-8


Andy Stepniewski
Wapato Wa