Hi Tweeters,

Yesterday I led a small group to two spots in the Ahtanum area west of
Yakima, searching for Spruce Grouse and Boreal Owl.

We started by walking up an abandoned forest road off the North Fork of the
Ahtanum Road, an area that Randy Hill wrote up in Washington Birder several
years ago. We hadn't been searching for ten minutes when John Hebert
spotted a male Spruce Grouse, which was just downhill from where I was
standing. A female was within ten feet of the male. We looked at them,
and took photos, for about 40 minutes. They have a reputation for being
quite tame. That is not an exaggeration. There were several times that I
had to back up to be far enough away from the birds to get them in focus.

After all of the trips I have taken to the Okanogan with Andy Stepniewski,
painfully searching through the areas of thick downfallen lodgepole pines
(Roger Lake, for instance) in "perfect Spruce Grouse habitat" with no
success, this trip seemed far too easy. Richard Repp has been on two
Spruce Grouse trips on White's Ridge and seen grouse both times. To be so
lucky!

After leaving that pair of grouse, we continued up the road and soon heard
a woodpecker tapping. John and I worked our way through the thick trees up
the hillside until we finally found a Black-backed Woodpecker working its
way up a tree.

We made our way back to the Middle Fork of the Ahtanum Road and stopped
several times to bird, waiting for it to get dark. At one stop we saw one
White-headed Woodpecker and heard and got brief looks at a Pileated
Woodpeckers. We then drove west to just past Clover Flats Campground near
Darland Mountain. Andy and Ellen Stepniewski and I had wonderful view of a
Boreal Owl several years ago at this location.

I played a tape and we soon heard two faint "skiew" calls of the
juveniles. After waiting for a while with no other results, we walked up
the road a ways and played the tape again. No response. As we were
getting into our cars, a Boreal Owl called loudly "skiew!, skiew!, skiew!"
from right above our car. Needless to say, we popped out of the cars very
quickly. I searched the tree with a flashlight but we couldn't see the
owl. Within twenty seconds, the owl flew south across the road and into
the trees. That was the extent of our success.

Denny Granstrand
Yakima, WA

* Denny Granstrand *
* Yakima, WA *
* dgranstrand at charter.net *
* Denny's bird photos can be seen online at: *
http://granstrand.net/gallery/