Hey tweets, I just got back from a 3-day business trip to Leavenworth. My,
it is difficult to fit business around birds, especially when one's boss
thinks it should be the other way around. I managed to sneak away only twice
the whole trip, both times by getting up so early in the morning that no one
was awake to catch me. I focused on the fish hatchery environs, which showed
extremely large numbers of:
chipping sparrows
warbling vireos
spotted towhees
black-headed grosbeaks
violet-green swallows

Also of note:
1 vesper sparrow (!)
a few yellow warblers
a few orange-crowned warblers
a little flock of Bullock's orioles
1 western wood-pewee
1 willow flycatcher (singing)
3 Lincoln's sparrows
1 coyote on the path (!)

The best bird of the trip was on the drive over: a NORTHERN GOSHAWK flew
over the road right next to my car 2 miles west of Leavenworth. I almost
drove my car into a tree, trying to track it. The truck driver on my tail
certainly was not happy with my speed nor my roller derby pathway. But what
kind of a birder wouldn't have stuck her head out the window as a GOSHAWK
paralleled my car for a few seconds, wheeled around ahead of me and then
plunged into the trees beside the river? By the time I had flung myself out
of the car, narrowly avoided getting my door ripped off by the truck, and
disentangled my binoculars, the goshawk had disappeared. Before it left,
though, it managed to get the two OSPREYS on their nest highly agitated.
They kept squawking for at least 15 minutes.

My driving experience has made me consider getting a bumper sticker for my
car. Not "I brake for birds." Somehow, that does not adequately convey the
full scope of erraticism that I exhibit when I see a good bird. Well, it
does to other birders, naturally, but most people aren't conversant with the
fully fledged nuttiness of an avid birder. Instead, I was thinking of
something like "Student Driver." I figure everyone would be leery of a
student driver at the wheel with *no instructor* sitting beside her. What do
you think?

Here's everything I found:
great blue heron
mallard
common merganser
turkey vulture
osprey
northern goshawk
California quail
rock pigeon
mourning dove
Vaux's swift
belted kingfisher
northern flicker
downy woodpecker
red-naped sapsucker
western wood-pewee
willow flycatcher
Say's phoebe
tree swallow
barn swallow
Steller's jay
American crow
common raven
black-capped chickadee
chestnut-backed chickadee
red-breasted nuthatch
Townsend's solitaire (Camas Meadows)
American robin
gray catbird
cedar waxwing
European starling
warbling vireo
orange-crowned warbler
yellow warbler
common yellowthroat
black-headed grosbeak
spotted towhee
vesper sparrow
song sparrow
chipping sparrow
dark-eyed junco
white-crowned sparrow
Lincoln's sparrow
Brewer's blackbird
Bullock's oriole
western tanager
American goldfinch
Cassin's finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com