Hi Everyone,

This morning I decided to stroll from the Lake Alice Road trailhead on the Snoqualmie-Preston Trail to the Snoqualmie Falls lookout at the end of the trail (1.8 miles one way, all on paved surface). This trail is essentially level and paved the whole way, so is an easy walk. It is pretty one-dimensional habitat, so not the place to go for a high species count - most of it is mature mixed forest, with a substantial percentage of conifers. There are a few small streams running off of Snoqualmie Ridge under the trail, and a power line and a couple of other successional habitat that provides some edges for species that don't like the mature woods.

Totaled only 20 species for the walk, nothing rare, but had some very nice looks at some good species, and it was an excellent morning for working on birding by ear. There were tons of birds singing - most notably WILSON'S WARBLERS, which seemed to be everywhere. Some presumably will be breeding here, but others were in forest away from their preferred breeding habitat, so probably migrating. Other singing or calling species at which I also had good looks included: PILEATED WOODPECKER, RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, SWAINSON'S THRUSH (few songs, but many doing their call notes) and WESTERN TANAGERS (WETA) calling constantly. After hearing everyone rave about the number of WETA's migrating through the area this year, I was beginning to feel deprived until this morning. There were sizable flocks of the birds moving through the treetops all along the trail. Again, few were singing but the 'purdaDIK' call notes were sounding constantly throughout the woods. Ditto with BLACK-HEADE!
D GROSB
EAKS, which were everywhere and singing as well, including one bird who appeared to be going for the Guiness Book of World Records for length of a single song. I also had my best looks ever at BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLERS in one of the brushy areas, where a pair of birds flew down to forage in low brush very near to where I was watching. SONG SPARROWS were in abundance, and offered a good chance to study some individual song variations between birds.

The morning included one unnerving encounter with a large black bear. I walked off the trail at one point trying to get a better look at a bird and instead of finding a bird, the brush exploded only about twenty feet away from me and I watched a very large bear butt fortunately heading away from me. Being cub season, I was very lucky this was either a female with no family or a male. The adrenaline was pumping pretty good there for a few minutes.

This trail is fairly lightly used and perhaps worth checking out for some of you. A better stretch of the trail, per Rob Conway who lives quite near it, is the stretch between the Preston trail head and its intersection with Fall City-Preston Road. The habitat on that stretch is more varied than the stretch I walked today, and it is closer to a sizable stream (the Raging River) for most of its distance.

It was certainly a gorgeous morning to be out and about.

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