Hi all,

I had never been up Umtanum Road, so decided to go today. On the way over, I took Hwy. 10 through the Upper Yakima canyon, then the Thorp Highway back to I-90 to E-burg.

My highlights along the Yakima included 3 RED TAILED HAWKS circling over the river not too much higher than the road. One, apparently purposely, dropped a small prey (a rodent of some sort, it appeared) and one of the other two caught it in the air. The three then stayed together and circled some more until out of sight. There was a lot of vocalization, so perhaps this was an adult and an immature or two begging for food and learning to hunt...or is it too early for young yet? At a nearby pulloff, I got a CANYON WREN, a first for me.

On the way up Umtanum Road from Ellensburg, the WESTERN BLUEBIRDS were thick as flies. I lost count of how many I saw during the drive - obviously the nest boxes are having a major impact. Other life birds for me were a GRASSHOPPER SPARROW, and an interesting double on two snag trees approximately across the road from bluebird nest box # 54. The PRARIE FALCON previously reported was lazily sitting on the highest horizontal limb of the large snag on top of the hill the whole time I was there, so I had plenty of time to study this beautiful bird through the scope. There is a smaller snag tree lower down in the meadow and slightly west of the large snag - on this smaller snag, a LEWIS'S WOODPECKER was near the top and hawked several bugs before flying off to the east. I stopped at a beautiful stand of trees across from 26800 Umtanum Road, where a party of horse people were taking off for a trail ride. Very close to the road there, I picked up my first CHIPPING SPARROW (a !
pair),
and also located a WESTERN WOOD PEWEE nest when one of the birds returned to it. The nest appeared extremely well engineered and built!

36 species in all, not a high number, but they included 5 life list birds for me.

And, yes, it was hot...! 96 degrees when I got into Selah (I completed the loop via North Wenas Road rather than backtrack on Umtanum).

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com