Hi, tweeters.

Having been out birding 3 days of the last 4, I wanted to share some
interesting observations. These were intended as dragonfly trips,
hopefully, but there was no fresh water on the first trip and wretched
weather on the second.

On Thursday, 7 Sep, we drove over Colockum Pass, northeast of Ellensburg,
my first visit there (and prompted by Brenda Senturia's article in
Earthcare NW). It's beautiful country, especially up high, and it was
alive with birds. Obviously a lot of migrants head up into the mountains
in the fall, when it's still moist up there. I've never seen more
Chipping Sparrows in my life, one flock that may have had 150 of them,
with about 20 Mountain Bluebirds at the same place, moving along a ridge,
flying over open meadows and through ponderosa pines, generally southward
bound. Everywhere we stopped there were many Yellow-rumped Warblers and
usually a few Townsend's mixed with them, sometimes more than a few.
Also very large numbers of Red-breasted Nuthatches and fair numbers of
Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Dark-eyed Juncos. Often these flocks just
moved through the trees rapidly, feeding in a small grove, then flying to
the next one. The featured bird was Clark's Nutcracker, however, which
we could hear at just about every stop. There were surely hundreds in
the high country, if not thousands, from the numbers we saw, constantly
on the move, presumably looking for food. Their primary foods are the
seeds of whitebark and ponderosa pines, and perhaps there was a failure
of whitebark cone production this year to bring so many of them to that
area. But we never saw any feeding in ponderosa pines, and there may not
have been much of a cone crop there, either. There were only a few type
2 Red Crossbills (ponderosa pine preferers). This could be an
interesting area for hawk migration; we saw a Cooper's and a
Sharp-shinned up high, both barreling to the south. I think Brenda
mentioned that it's a pretty crummy road, but it should be quite passable
with a regular car and cautious driver.

On Saturday and Sunday, 9-10 Sep, we visited the Okanogan, starting with
the high country from Winthrop to Roger Lake and Long Swamp, then down to
Loomis on Saturday. The road from the south to Long Swamp reaches almost
7,000' elevation and is in really good shape this year; you drive for
miles and miles through lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce forest, about
as high and boreal as you can get on a road in Washington. Spruce Grouse
are common there, from the number I've seen and from the wings I've seen
deposited in boxes placed out for hunters to do this, so the WDFW can
assess sex and age ratios in harvests. There were huge flocks of
migrants up there, too, especially Red-breasted Nuthatches, Ruby-crowned
Kinglets, and Yellow-rumped Warblers, also lots of Townsend's Warblers
again. Mixed with the presumed migrants were many Boreal (at every stop
from Roger Lake to near Long Swamp) and Mountain chickadees. Several
flocks of Gray Jays (they look very different there from those in the
Cascades) and one male Three-toed Woodpecker added more spice. We had
planned to camp at Long Swamp and look for Boreal Owls, but it was
unbelievably cold up there, horrendously windy by mid afternoon, and it
snowed on us briefly! We decided owling would be a waste of time, and we
weren't prepared for *winter* camping, so we came down to the lowlands
for the night.

We came down the paved road from Long Swamp to Loomis late in the
afternoon, and in the beautiful aspen groves along that spectacular road,
there were more big flocks of migrants flying up from the
roadside--robins, flickers, White-crowned Sparrows, Yellow-rumped
Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and many other species mixed in--really
neat. Smaller numbers of Townsend's and Orange-crowned warblers, type 4
(Douglas-fir preferer) Red Crossbills, Western Bluebirds, Steller's Jays,
Hairy Woodpeckers, Townsend's Solitaire, and others. There were large
numbers of Vaux's Swifts and Barn and Violet-green swallows over
Oroville, and huge flocks of Brewer's Blackbirds there on 9/9 and 9/10,
almost like a staging area for them.

Sunday morning the weather had turned even worse, and we stayed in the
lowlands looking for birds (I keep thinking there will be an eastern
warbler in one of those isolated patches of trees, but for me there never
is), saw a good smattering of migrants again at several stops (Lincoln's
Sparrow, Gray Catbird, Say's Phoebe, Western Tanager, Warbling Vireo,
more kinglets and nuthatches, at least two spp. of empidonax, but only
one Yellow-rumped Warbler!), some of them surprisingly late in the
season. We saw 3 Say's Phoebes, and I didn't know they were present so
late, but perhaps they're migrants from Alaska. I was also surprised to
see a catbird (it even sang briefly). I had the strong feeling that
there really were differences among the bird species that migrated
primarily through the mountains or through the lowlands, but a lot more
observation could either strengthen or negate that conclusion.

We found lots of Clark's Nutcrackers again in the Sinlahekin, chowing
down on ponderosa pine seeds (I've seen them there, at 1700' elevation,
most years). A surprise was an adult Golden Eagle perched in a big
cottonwood over the Okanogan River south of Omak (I called it a Bald
Eagle as we were pulling up, as I couldn't have imagined a Golden in that
setting--but I've still got a lot to learn), also Turkey Vultures (3 near
Omak, 2 near Wenatchee), which I rarely see on that run. Of water birds
I considered of interest, we saw a Stilt Sandpiper and 2 Red-necked
Phalaropes with 2 Lesser Yellowlegs in a small lake on the road from Fish
Lake to US 97, NW of Omak, also 7 Common Terns (4 ad, 3 juv) and 2 imm
Bonaparte's Gulls actively feeding at the mouth of the Methow at Pateros,
another juv Common Tern on Lake Chelan, and an adult and juvenile of that
species at Entiat.

But perhaps the neatest bird of the trip was a new bird for our yard list
as we came out of the house at 6:30 Saturday morning (9/9) to leave on
the trip--two silent Common Nighthawks flew over, heading south under
heavy clouds. These are the only nighthawks I've seen in Seattle in the
last 20 years.

Dennis Paulson

Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
(206) 528-1382