Hi Tweets,

Nancy Taylor and I spent two days birding in the Okanogan area on Sunday and
Monday. We spent the 4th up in the eastern highlands and the 5th on the west
side moving north to south through the Palmer Lake, Sinalheeken Valley
corridor down to Concunully Lake. Although our primary target birds, Boreal
Chickadee, American Redstart, and Red-eyed Vireo eluded us, we had a great
trip with 105 species over the two days (including 5 life birds for Nancy
and 4 for me). We'd like to express our thanks to Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
(with help from Brian Bell and Gene Revelas), and Jerry and Sandy Converse
for their great site suggestions. Throughout our trip, with a fist full of
trip printouts and a ragged DeLorme, we once again marveled at what a
valuable resource Tweeters has become for us. Thank you everyone!

(As an aside, let me acknowledge how much I appreciate and look forward to
the astute and insightful contributions that regularly come from the likes
of Anderson, Baccus, Price, Rowlett, Stepniewski, Weber, et al. I especially
appreciate the dialogue when it gets testy, even emotional. And
occasionally, we get rather remarkable gems of writing like Jerry Broadus's
"Redneck Musings" from last week. I like it all!)

Sunday morning dawned cloudy and cool with a pretty stiff breeze out of the
north. We could see sunshine to the south as we headed up into the Cameron
Lake loop from Omak. This area is a lovely high plateau of rolling hills and
pothole lakes east of the Okanogan Valley with an incredible diversity of
avian life. It seemed that every turn and every little lake had something
new. Besides the multitudes of freshly fledged little guys all over the
place, highlights included LARK SPARROW, YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD, WILSON'S
PHALAROPE, COMMON SNIPE, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, WHITE-BREASTED and PYGMY
NUTHATCHES (no RBNU). This area was very productive.

In the afternoon we headed up towards Lyman Lake where we got shut down for
about an hour in a couple of heavy rain showers. Then we circled down
through the Aeneus Valley and up to Oroville via Ellesford. Best find was a
THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. Others include SORA, WESTERN TANAGER, WILLOW
FLYCATCHER, WILSON'S, YELLOW, and ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLERS, and BOBOLINKS. At
Ellesford we had several GRAY CATBIRDS and the NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH by the
bridge.

Monday dawned spectacularly clear and we headed up the Similkameen Canyon
out of Oroville to Nighthawk, Chopaka, Palmer Lake, then down to Concunully
Lake. While we were generally short on raptor species over the whole trip
(save RTHA and AMKE with no accipiters or other falcons), we had a great
scope look at a perched GOLDEN EAGLE surveying the valley in the early
morning sun from the canyon rim...looked like a man seated there on my first
scan...a big, beautiful, magnificent bird! In the Chopaka area we had large
numbers of GRAY CATBIRDS (which in the past have always seemed hard to come
by), LEWIS'S WOODPECKERS, and BULLOCK'S ORIOLES. We also had a good
selection of WRENS, including BEWICK'S, CANYON, ROCK, and many MARSH and
HOUSE. Our trip up to Long Swamp was uneventful...beautiful drive, but
pretty quiet save an AUDUBON'S WARBLER and a RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET. Later we
had a MACGILIVRAY'S WARBLER by Fish Lake. One image that stood out from the
day made us think of Ruth. One of the many lakes in the Sinalheeken Valley
had a female BARROW'S GOLDENEYE with young swimming and diving among
literally thousands of those brilliant blue dragonflies that were teeming
and swirling across the placid surface of the water. Stunning sight.

Although we had some significant misses (raptors, vireos, Lazuli Bunting,
Redstart, owls), all in all it was our best 2 days to date.

Good luck and good birding.
Joe Mackie
jmackie at cc.wwu.edu
Bellingham