What a great morning for some birding! Today I headed out to the
Capital State Forest and took the Rock Candy Mountain Road enterance
off of Hwy 8. I did not encounter much traffic while birding in the
forest (a couple of logging trucks and one dump truck), probably
becuase this was a friday and the weekend ATV crowd was not present.
I kept to the main entry road passing the paved parking area on the
right and road B-8000 on the left. A few miles further on spur road
B-6000 took off to the right and shortly thereafter B-5000 was to the
left.
I ended up taking B-5000 (as it appeared the logging trucks were
using the main road and I wanted to avoid any more of them if
possible). I had my first HERMIT WARBLERS exactly 2.5 miles up B-5000
from this intersection. I ended up observing HERMIT WARBLERS at a
couple of different locations along this road (which eventually became
C-4000). It seemed like the most common bird around was the WILSON'S
WARBLER as they were just about everywhere. Exploring some of the
dead end spur roads off of B-5000 and C-4000 was really a great way to
spend the morning looking for birds. The list of birds for this trip
included:

Sooty Grouse - (heard at a couple of locations)
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
Band-tailed Pigeon
Rufous Hummingbird
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Hammond's Flycatcher
Pacific-slope Flycatcher
Hutton's Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Steller's Jay
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Winter Wren (heard several times)
American Robin
Varied Thrush
Hermit Warbler
MacGilllivray's Warbler
Wilson's Warbler
Spotted Towhee
Song Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Black-headed Grosbeak
American Goldfinch
Evening Grosbeak

Cheers and Good Birding;

Michael Fleming
Ballard, Washington
michaelfleming01 AT gmail.com