Hello tweets,

We made a quick trip to Okanogan County Fri/Sat in the midst of record low
temperatures. We drove the high-country road from Winthrop to Long Swamp on
Friday afternoon, and it was snowing lightly up there, with some
accumulation on the ground. Intensely cold, well below zero in midafternoon.
But it was so nice (far away from urban life) up there that we returned by
the same route Saturday. We saw 5 Three-toed Woodpeckers and several flocks
of Boreal Chickadees. Gray Jays and Clark's Nutcrackers were fairly common,
and we also saw at least a few each of Hairy Woodpeckers, Common Ravens,
Mountain Chickadees, Brown Creepers, Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned
kinglets, American Robins, and Dark-eyed Juncos. That's it.

The Gray Jays up there are actually quite interesting. Populations of this
species in the Okanogan/Okanagan area were named as a distinct subspecies
"connexus" because they seemed intermediate between Pacific coast birds and
interior birds (which are so different from one another they were formerly
considered two species). Subsequently, ornithologists have thought that
"connexus" merely represented intergrades between Cascades birds (the
Pacific coast type) and Rocky Mountain birds (the interior type). But
actually birds that look like "connexus" occur over a wide area in the
Okanogan highlands, and they probably do represent a locally distributed
distinct subspecies.

The highlight ("high" = high elevation, "light" = quality of light) of our
trip was surely the road between Long Swamp and Loomis. For those of you
who haven't been there, that paved road is laid out along one of the more
scenic routes in Washington. It features a south slope with extensive open
grassy hillsides (including cows, unfortunately) with the highest density of
quaking aspen groves I've seen anywhere in the state. At this time of year
their fall colors were breathtaking, not only aspens but larch-covered
hillsides on the opposite north slope. Scarcely a bird, but the scenery was
worth two traverses. Each aspen clone has a slightly different color-change
schedule and slightly different colors, at least in the range of eye-popping
chrome yellow to fiery scarlet-orange. Some groves were already completely
leafless, the stark white trunks furnishing the visual candy, while others
nearby hadn't even started to change color.

In farmlands east of Fish Lake we saw a half-dozen Mountain Bluebirds and
two Western Bluebirds at one spot (October 11). Other than these birds,
there was nothing that I could be confident was still in southbound
migration, except probably some good-sized flocks of robins on the same
road. Interestingly, we saw no solitaires, which were such a feature of
this thrush thoroughfare last winter; perhaps they haven't moved into the
area for whatever resource is available later. Winter has arrived over
there, but not yet bringing winter birds with it.

The change from summer to winter is striking east of the Cascades, with
large areas seemingly birdless. We did a lot of pygmy-owl tooting up in the
mountains, and at most stops, no birds responded and there seemed to be no
birds. The same was true in lowland woodlots, as in the Sinlahekin and
Methow wildlife areas. Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" is quite
inappropriate out here, but "silent fall" fits the situation very well.

Even after the subfreezing temps of the night before, we managed to find a
few late-season dragonflies near Winthrop, resting on light-colored rocks
and logs that reflect the equally pale sunlight onto their chilly bodies.

What really struck us was the abundance and ubiquity of hunters. We felt
very conspicuous in our lack of fluorescent-orange vests. Deer season opened
Saturday, and in the Okanogan National Forest and Sinlahekin and Methow
wildlife areas there were hundreds of hunters, the great majority deer
hunters but including a smattering of upland-bird enthusiasts. One reads
about the decline of hunting and increase of birding, but I have a feeling
the numerical discrepancy is still very great between these two groups of
resource-users. We saw well over 100 hunter vehicles on our route, with 2-3
people per vehicle. There were tent cities everywhere. I suspect this
one-day total exceeds the total annual visitation by birders of the same
area. I think hunting is still a considerably bigger lobby than birding and
nature study - at least this is apparent out in nature (hunters don't
frequent city parks and sewage lagoons).

Parenthetically, I should add that we heard scarcely a gunshot in the high
country, and I don't think the deer were having a very bad time of it. In
fact, I think that hunters in such numbers mostly serve to scare deer out
from each others' way!

Dennis Paulson