Subject: Black-backed Woodpeckers nonorth of Hwy 410
Date: Jul 10 12:50:51 1999
From: osprey at nwinfo.net - osprey at nwinfo.net


At Andy Stepniewski's request and with his directions, I investigated a
small burn between Hwy 410 and Forest Road 1705 about forty miles west of
Yakima this morning.

Forest Road 1705 takes off north from Hwy 410 at Whistling Jack's Motel.
Take 1705 about 4.6 miles to the first main fork in the road. Take the
righthand fork, go fifty yards and park at a gate blocking a small spur road.

I walked south on the spur road about 3/4 of a mile. The road turned west
for the last 100 yards and ended on top of a very short ridge. The
consisted of little fingers of burned trees with lots of undamaged
treesspread throughout the burned area.

When I got to the end of the road I stopped to take a look around and almost
immediately heard a wookpecker tapping. I noticed many trees with the
tell-tale sign of Three-toed and/or Black-backed Woodpeckers: lots of newly
uncovered patches of bark shinning against the black, burned trees.

Within two minutes I spotted one BBWO, and then another on the same tree. I
was able to watch them for nearly ten minutes as they worked their way
around and up the large Ponderosa Pine.

I walked further out the ridge but found no more woodpeckers. There seemed
to be quite of lot of burned trees in the area but surverying the entire
area would be hard work as it would require much climbing down and back up
the sides of the ridge. I was content to scan about for a while.

Being on the top of the ridge made it nice for tooting in birds since they
landed in the tops of trees that were just barely over eye-level.

On my way back to the car I ran into another BBWO, this time in an area of
live trees well away from the burned areas.

Also there:

Pygmy Owl - heard tooting in the distance
Northern Flicker
Common Raven
Mountain Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Western Bluebird
Townsend's Solitaire - many of them
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Dark-eyed Junco
Cassin's Finch
Pine Siskin

Denny Granstrand
Yakima, WA



Denny Granstrand