Tweets - my family did a short backpacking trip along Ingalls Creek in
Chelan Co. this week, and it was much birdier than I expected.

The trail follows the bottom of the long valley, for the most part,
beginning in Ponderosa Pine forest and working through higher, wetter
forests. We did not get up to alpine elevations on our trip, hiking only
the bottom 15 miles or so.

There are several large sections of the trail that run through a fairly
recent burn. Some areas were fairly completely burned, but much of it was
only partially burned, with the undergrowth gone, a few trees killed, but
many trees recovering. These part-burned areas were particularly birdy.

Highlights:

Harlequin Duck Female, 3 'lings W of Falls Creek
American Dipper Pretty common in creek
Williamson's Sapsucker Immature W of Falls Creek
Black-backed Woodpecker Female W of Hardscrabble Creek
Cassin's Vireo Heard just W of Falls Creek
Western Tanager Abundant
Yellow Warbler A few
Yellow-rumped Warbler Quite a few; Audubon's race
Orange-crowned Warbler 1
Townsend's Warbler Quite a few
Nashville Warbler A few
MacGillivray's Warbler Most common warbler
Evening Grosbeak Quite common and noisy

The most unusual bird was what I believe to have been an immature VARIED
THRUSH, though it looked very strange. The head pattern was similar to an
adult male VATH, but the broad eyebrow stripe was pure white, while the
darker line through the eye was just a dark smudge. There was NO breast
band (so rule out adult male?), the breast looking much like that shown for
a juvenile in Sibley. There was only a hint of orange on the bird. I did
not see it's back, as it always faced me.

Fun sightings were the RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRDS that seemed very interested in my
wife's bright orange sun hat.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== hummer at isomedia.com