Last Tuesday (6/29/04) found Matthew Moskwik and I
were primarily looking for amphibians within a
fascinating boreal mosaic of wet interior forest,
valley peatlands, and alder swamps situated along the
Bonner County, ID/Pend Oreille County, WA border. Of
course, there were plenty of birds to distract us.

As we drove into Priest River, ID, we saw a Gapper's
Red-backed Vole hop across the road. This species
serves' as the primary food source for the Boreal Owl,
and was a nice mammal life list addition to our
respective mammal life lists.

While numerous Pine Siskin and Evening Grosbeaks lined
the road the runs across the state line, we spied a
male HARLEQUIN DUCK flying upstream from the Granite
Creek bridge on the Idaho side. As expected, Northern
Waterthrushes and MacGillivray's Warblers are quite
common through this corridor. We carefully examined
the Willow Flycatcher in this area, but didn't detect
any Alder Flycatchers. Snowshoe Hares, Columbian
Ground Squirrels, Red Squirrels, and Red-tailed
Chipmunks were the prevalent mammals.

Along the shore of Huff Lake (P.O. Co.), a Lincoln
Sparrow greeted us with it's summertime song. Huff
Lake is a valley peatland or floating sphagnum bog on
a lake that contains such regionally rare plants as
Creeping Snowberry, Trailing Cranberry, Bog Laurel,
and Northern Starflower (which was in bloom). Since
most of my field guides are currently in storage, we
were unable to identify the numerous tadpoles. Plenty
of unusual dragonflies cruised the lake too. Perhaps,
the Sullivan's can sort these out. As Matthew
previously mentioned, we had a Cordilleran type
Western Flycatcher singing at Granite Pass.

A hundred yards up the road from the Huff Lake
entrance, we saw a frog that appeared to be a Wood
Frog. Since we did not have it in hand, we couldn't
examine it's ventral side to completely rule out an
unusually marked Spotted Frog. Later, we viewed a
typical Spotted Frog on another lake, and we felt
pretty confidant that the first frog was indeed a Wood
Frog. We found some very young Boreal Toads at Granite
Pass and in Roosevelt Grove.

We spent much of the mid-afternoon southeast of
Sandpoint futilely searching for alligator lizards. We
saw one Wandering Garter Snake (W. Terrestrial
Garter), but no other herps. On the return trip, we
did see a Meadow Vole near Bottle Bay.

On Thursday (7/1/04), several of us ventured up Pend
Oreille and Stevens Counties with visions of Spruce
Grouse, Three-toed Woodpecker, and Black-backed
Woodpecker in our heads. After an intensive search
through great looking habitat, we came up with none of
these species.

We found at least 6 different noisy Red-naped
Sapsucker nests, the Colville City Park Merlin nest,
Bald Eagle and No. Waterthrush on Big Meadow Lake,
Lewis' Woodpecker and Mountain Bluebird in Steven's
County, Bobolinks at Cusick, and a flying Bittern over
Calispell Lake.

Mammals for the day included Elk-8, WT Deer, Snowshoe
Hare, Red-tailed Chipmunk, Red Squirrel, and Columbian
Ground Squirrel. On lower Tacoma Creek Road, we saw a
cow Moose and swimming calf on a lake. Within the
dense forest on Seldom Seen Mountain, we saw a Montane
(Dusky) Shrew run across the road.

Last week's trips provided us with ample summer sun
and myriad wildlife. Hopefully, we will turn many more
interesting critters through out the season.

Gina Sheridan
Spokane, WA













__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail