Hi Tweeters,

I was able to do some hiking and camping with my wife and a friend along
the Dosewallips River in Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest
in Jefferson County over the weekend. We recorded only about 30 species
of birds on the trip, but this was a good total based on my usual
experiences birding in tall-tree country. Some of our more rewarding
observations are listed below.

Harlequin Duck had a single female, a male-female pair, and two males
visit the section of river near our tent. Going to bed and waking up on a
noisy, rushing mountain stream with these birds close at hand is
unbeatable.

Osprey 1 bird flying high above the river 1.5 miles inside the national
park.

Townsend's Solitaire 1 bird flycatching mayflies emerging from the river
at our camp (at 1600 feet elevation). This was an unexpected species, but
upon returning home, I learned that solitaires are uncommon nesters in the
Olympics.

Hermit Warbler 1 bird seen well and several heard.

Vaux's Swift Good numbers were present up and down the river and were
also attacking the mayflies. At one sunny site along the river bank, the
mayflies were well illuminated in the sunshine as they rose 10-20 m above
the river and I was actually able to see swifts intercepting some of them
at full speed. Very cool! We also had several opportunities at overlooks
to view swifts below us and could not only see their pale throats and
rumps, but even their small facial mask (see Sibley) at times. I've never
seen this character in the field before.

Blue Grouse Perhaps the best sighting of all was going off-trail to
search for a calling male and actually finding him. I've always had a
desire to do this, but had never tried it. I suffered from several
misconceptions, one being that the bird would be on the ground actively
displaying and the second being that his bright neck patches would be
flared, as shown in all the field guides. After 30 minutes of searching,
I finally spotted the grouse perched about 10 feet from the top of a
75-foot-tall Douglas fir. He was quite unbothered by my presence and
called throughout the 90 minutes that I was nearby. His display was far
more subdued than I expected he remained motionless the entire time
except to lean his neck and head slightly forward while calling, when his
neck feathers became somewhat ruffled. Although I could clearly see the
thin yellow eyebrow, there was no sign of the yellow neck patches. All of
this rather reminded me of a tropical pigeon calling from a hidden perch
high in the forest canopy. For those of you who are interested, I read
through the Birds of North America account today and learned that this
type of display is of coarse entirely normal for the Pacific coast form of
Blue Grouse. Most males sing from perches in trees and active displays
don't begin until a female arrives.

As if this wasn't enough, we closed the weekend by watching 25-30 elk
feeding next to the road in one of the farm pastures in the lower
Dosewallips valley.

Gary Wiles
Olympia, WA
wilesharkey at yahoo.com





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