We went birding this weekend in the Yakima Canyon, as we were anxious to try some pictures of the American White Pelicans and to travel up Umptanum Creek to see the Lazuli Buntings, Yellow-Breasted Chats, and Prairie Falcons.

While shooting the pelicans, a beautiful Bullock's Oriole landed in a nearby bush, just begging for me to take its picture through the digiscope.

The Lazuli Buntings were very spooky, so we couldn't get too close. We chased a Chat around a brushpile for quite some time without ever getting a photo. I got one shot of another Chat, but not close enough to be a good one.

We found quite a few Blackheaded Grosbeaks, which are easy to find because they love to holler loudly, somewhat like a robin.

A Wilson's Warbler was flitting around in the brush just across the railroad tracks in Umptanum Canyon. It was jumping around something fierce, but I did get one kind of blurry shot.

We kept hearing a bird we couldn't identify - it made a low, short whistle repeated 4 times, then a fast whistle on the same low note repeated about 10 times. It sounded like it was far away, but we couldn't ever see the bird to identify it.

Several Prairie Falcons were seen flying around among the rocks and perching, well up the trail from the Yakima River.

By the way, if you go in the brush along the trail, check for ticks. I found 1 inside my shirt on Saturday and two on Sunday.

We left the lower end of Umptanum, which was very busy as this was the Kittitas County shrub/steppe awareness day, and went around to the upper end in the Wenas area. We hit the warbler jackpot. One large bush was loaded with them eating like crazy. We had Audubon Warblers, Townsend's Warblers and Nashville Warblers all moving around through the same bush.

As we came back through the Wenas, we saw a Lewis's Woodpecker in a pine tree. We stopped to take a look and were lucky enough to see a territorial battle begin. A pair of Prairie Falcons moved in and chased the Lewis's off the tree. Then, another Lewis's, which was the mate to the first one, showed up and chased off the Falcons. They went back and forth like that for quite some time. A pair of Western Bluebirds sat atop a nearby fir tree and watched the show with us. It was a pretty even match, it seems. The woodpeckers were not at all intimidated by the falcons. They had two nest holes in the pine tree and were clearly trying to mate.

As usual, I've put some pictures on my pbase web site. Take a look if you like and happy birding.

http://www.pbase.com/macknight/inbox

Mac Knight

mac_knight at charter.net
Yakima, Washington
Home Page - http://www.macknight.addr.com
Gallery - http://www.pbase.com/macknight