Hi Tweeters: My husband and I just spent a three-day weekend at....Wenas campground! We are doing some trail improvements in anticipation of next year's 50th anniversary of the annual Memorial Day Wenas campout, the largest such FREE Audubon event in the nation. The Big Reveal on these improvements will be next summer--don't miss it.

As we drove on the gravel road from Ellensburg, we encountered a stunning 5- or 6-point bull elk, his antlers all in velvet. Nearby was a herd of cows and a couple of spikes, also in velvet. We saw a dead poorwill on the road, no doubt nailed by a car.

Wenas was gloriously quiet. Memorial Day always attracts a lot of people and ATV riders, but not over our weekend. It was serene, and the occasional shower brought out the smell of blooming mint, wild rose and the scent of sagebrush. Very few people seem to camp there, probably because of the lack of facilities. It was interesting to see Wenas later in the summer--different flowers in bloom, and lots of juvenile birds. At Hardy Canyon, there were the usual chats, flycatchers, lazuli buntings and the noisiest family of house wrens ever heard. We suspected a predator, but didn't see an owl. I guessed rattlesnake. Husband cautionsly entered the small stand of aspen to take a look, and out popped a very large, healthy turkey hen, clucking reproachfully. We think she probably had young concealed in the trees. Further up canyon, by the big ponderosa, we found a family of ash-throated flycathers--a new life bird for both of us, adding yet another species to our list of life birds from the Wenas Valley.

We drove through Yakima Canyon on the way home and stopped at Umtanum Creek. It was awash in Sunday river rafters with cases of beer. All the prairie falcon chicks appear to have fledged. Two yellow-breasted chats are doing their American Idol auditions, singing competitively at the creek mouth. To avoid the crowds we went left, up the side canyon. When we reached the spring that turns that little canyon into a desert oasis, there in a stunted cottonwood we found a great-horned owl clutching a decapitated 3-foot-long snake in its talons. The snake species was not a rattler, but other than that we couldn't identify it as anything but "dinner."

By the way, it was comfortably warm at Wenas. Delightfully so!

Liz Brown
Pilchuck Audubon member
Edmonds, Wash.