Hi Tweets,

Even though the Kettle Valley Songbird Festival took a pause this
year, this past weekend several of us from Pilchuck Audubon headed
over to Curlew (Ferry County) and toured some of the properties that
are part of the regular festival. Susie Schaefer has her Highlands
contacts so we had wonderful visits and good birding, sometimes in
the clouds and sometimes in the rain. Glare along with the cloud
cover made some identifications difficult but we did rack up 95
species for the weekend. High water on lakes and flooding on rivers
and creeks was the norm.

The Bobolinks had not yet arrived at their nesting hay field along
Aeneas Valley Road in Okanogan County. We saw no gulls or vireos.
Chipping Sparrows were out in force everywhere, but not others. We
saw lots of Red Heads at lots of sites but only one Canvas-backed
Duck, which was on Molson Lakes. The only Cinnamon Teal of the trip
was at Muskrat Lake on Havillah Road. We found two colonies of Bank
Swallows. One is on Highway 21 between Curlew and Danville, closer
to Danville and on the only high bank along that stretch of road.
The other smaller colony is at the north end of Havillah Road,
probably a half mile south of its intersection with Chesaw Road and
on the east side of the road. Ruffed Grouse were revving their
motors just about everywhere. Spotted Sandpiper was seen in good
numbers. We could not find a Solitary. We heard a lot of Wilson's
Snipe and saw several on the wing.

We drove to Winthrop Friday night so that we could bird the Sun
Mountain Beaver Ponds Saturday morning. A steady rain prevented us
from starting as early as we had planned but by the time we reached
the beaver ponds it had let up. Some of the highlights of Sun
Mountain were Violet-green, Barn, and Tree Swallows; Bullock's
Oriole; Western Kingbird; Say's Phoebe; House, Bewick's, and Marsh
Wren; Common and Hooded Merganser; woodpeckers were Northern Flicker,
Red-naped Sapsucker, Hairy, and Downy. Driving up to the Sun
Mountain Lodge we encountered a male Blue Grouse perched on the post
of the guard rail. He stayed and stayed and stayed and was still
there on our way back down. We found zero bird activity at Loup Loup
Campground. We tried to drive the back road to Conconully but hit
snow that was impassable for our two vehicles about three miles north
of the campground. We spent some time looking for Boreal Chickadee
but struck out. However, we did enjoy observations of Mountain
Chickadee. We had regular sitings of Western Tanager throughout the
weekend.

The pond on Toroda Creek Road, about a mile and a half from Wauconda,
produced good numbers of Black Tern and Yellow-headed Blackbird. We
found several Wilson's Phalarope at this site. We stayed on a
private property in Curlew that yielded our only Lazuli Bunting and
Lewis's Woodpecker of the trip. From a property adjacent to the
Republic sewer treatment ponds, we had a prolonged observation of a
Sora and good views of a pair of Golden Eagles that are nesting on
the mountain to the southeast. Gray Catbird and Veery had not yet
arrived. Red-necked Phalarope were on one of the ponds. They were
also seen at a number of other lakes throughout the Highlands. At
another site near Wauconda we delighted in great and prolonged views
of a male Williamson's Sapsucker. We finally got to see both the
male and female on the same snag that is most likely their nest
site. We also watched a Northern Saw Whet Owl on her nest on this
property. From the Lake Beth USFS Campground on Chesaw Road we
found our only nesting pair of Common Loon. Our other highlight at
Lake Beth was our only Townsend's Solitaire.


Carol Riddell
Edmonds