Tweets:

I just returned from my week of backpacking in the North Cascades National
Park, with my friend Richard. Thought I'd tell you about the birds we saw.


All things considered, we had a pretty neat time, despite the 100 or so
mosquito bites, two bee stings, and many blisters on my feet.

WHAT WE DID: Last Saturday morning we were dropped off at HANNAGAN PASS,
north of Mt. Baker. Our route: hike up to HANNAGAN PASS, over COPPER
RIDGE, down into a river valley, up and over WHATCOM PASS, then down again,
up and over BEAVER PASS, then down again, then out to ROSS LAKE, where our
car was waiting. All of this took six days (55 miles). I don't even KNOW
what the total elevation gain and loss was for the whole trip, but I am
certain that the total gain was over 10,000 feet, and the loss was likely
comparable.

And now for the bird highlights....

What we SAW:

OLD GROWTH FOREST (okay, this isn't a bird...)
WOW! I'd never seen an ancient forest of this magnitude before. It was
gorgeous - huge, ancient trees, towering over a carpet of neon-green mosses
and lichens, with downed logs everywhere. Some of the cedar trees were over
a thousand years old. Hiking through old-growth isn't easy. One day in
particular, there were seventy downed logs across the trail, and some of
these were enormous. And what does one see in an old-growth forest?

SPOTTED OWL!
This was clearly the highlight, and an unexpected one. This was down in the
valley, prior to hiking up Whatcom pass. We awoke at 6am one morning to the
toot....toot.....toot of a Pygmy Owl. Being the slightly less-than-ethical
birder that I am, I got out of the tent and started imitating him, hoping he
would come in so I could see him. He didn't come, but a Spotted Owl did!
The Spotted was so curious - checking me out, trying to figure out who I
was. I called Richard out of his slumber and he got to see it, too.
Eventually the owl got bored with us and flew away. The most amazing thing
was his 3-foot wingspan - how such a large bird can maneuver in dense forest
with such agility.

also in the old-growth:
VARIED THRUSH
PYGMY OWL (heard)
WINTER WREN

and up on COPPER RIDGE...
Now, I have been trying to track down a WHITE-TAILED PTARMIGAN for YEARS.
Like the Spotted Owl, the Ptarmigan is on every birder's most-wanted list,
right? Well, I did not only see one Ptarmigan - I saw a whole family - a
mom (I assume) and two chicks. I am not exaggerating when I say these
creatures were just about the cutest things I've ever seen. I only saw them
because I mistakenly went down a wrong trail, too! The Ptarmigan were
about 100 yards from the LOOKOUT cabin on Copper Ridge.

Well, that's about it for bird highlights. We also saw some HAIRY
WOODPECKERS, HARRIERS, and heard lots of kinglets and chickadees.

An additional excitement (and a new hobby of mine) was identifying the
native plants. I recently got the local plant bible "Plants of the Pacific
Northwest Coast" by Pojar / McKinnon, and lugged it along despite its heavy
poundage. The book was even used by Richard to identify all of the
blueberries and huckleberries he was eating!

Well, we had lots of fun, but it is good to be home.

Lauren