Hello tweeters.

This is a belated report of a few birds seen Sunday, 4 November.

A flock of about 50 Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches was feeding and flying around
in the first meadow you come to on your left when you drive up toward
Colockum Pass from Ellensburg/Kittitas. We saw no others with considerable
search, nor would we have seen these birds if they hadn't been in the air
was we drove by. They were all Hepburn's, with heads mostly gray. The only
thing that really surprised me about the encounter was that they persisted
in landing in ponderosa pines, both dead snags with lots of branches and
leafy trees. I didn't know rosy-finches landed in trees! They also fed in
a dense group along several gravel roads through the meadow, allowing very
close approach.

They presumably use these dry fairly high-elevation (4500') meadows east of
their breeding grounds as a stopping place on their trip from the alpine
zone (breeding habitat) down to the Columbia Basin canyons (winter habitat),
and I wonder how long they hang around there. I also wonder if they use
them in the spring on their way back up.

We saw no Pine Grosbeaks, reported the week before, or Great Gray Owls. We
spent a lot of time scrutinizing meadow edges for Great Gray and Hawk owls,
both of which should have been there! Also a lot of time tooting for
pygmy-owls, with no luck. Bird life was generally scarce, with the
exception of Mountain Chickadees, which were common in flocks of 10-15
birds; both Red-breasted and White-breasted nuthatches were seen
accompanying them. Also saw a flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets, 2 Hairy
Woodpeckers, a flicker, lots of ravens, a few Steller's Jays, one nutcracker
and one magpie (at about 5200' in mountain forest - wonder if it was a bird
from Canada, where they live in forests), mostly a decided lack of birds.

In driving through the fields north of Kittitas on the way back (heavy fog
chilled the air in the valley, while the sunny mountain slopes above must
have been 10? warmer), we saw an amazing concentration of dozens of
Red-tailed Hawks and a few harriers along road 81; there must be a lot of
voles in those fields. Among them were two nice Harlan's Red-tails, a
dark-morph immature and a light-morph immature. Both provided close looks,
although the fog and dark gray sky precluded photographs.

Right now there's a hummingbird at the feeder, reminding me that birds of
tropical origin can withstand quite cold temperatures if they have enough to
eat!

Dennis
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115