We swung around on I-82 at about 1:30 p.m. to check out the Selah Rest Area before starting up Canyon Rd. from the south, to check on a Prairie Falcon eyrie and a daytime view of a Barn Owl nest cave. It was hot, around 88 or 90, but there was a slight breeze, and the blue sky and fine cloud formations, helped with my mind's cooling process. Water helped a bunch, too.

Although the rest area didn't updraft a Prairie Falcon for us as it had for Doug Schurman during a WOS Conference Field trip, we did find a Western Kingbird nest, with a pair of kingbirds taking turns on either eggs or hatchlings. Also found some brilliantly red House Finches there.

On to the next port of call: Milepost 4-ish along Canyon Rd., for a look inside the Prairie Falcon eyrie. The little (but getting bigger) fluffy chick was initially near the opening, in front of his "pet rock", so-named by Ralph Meier in one of his videos. The chick was sometimes up, sometimes down, seemingly alternating doing little dozes with looking out for Mom. Sue & I set ourselves up with camping chairs, binoculars, cameras, a scope, sunscreen, hats on the ledge above the RR tracks and river and enjoyed the show for about an hour (in mid-afternoon). The 3-wk old chick was most of the show, but at finale time, immediately following our declaration to the wind, that we were leaving, Sue heard an adult calling and we succeeded in finding and following the cryptically-colored beauty, flying at mid-cliff level, from south to north, past the eyrie and then back the other way again, effortlessly gliding along. She ultimately headed up over the rim and disappeared. Little "One-der" never surfaced to say "Hi" as she flew by - he'd headed off to the rear of the cave, presumably to catch another 40 winks - he must have had a good feeding at noon when Ralph videoed the Mom bringing in lunch, and was succumbing to the after-meal flops and perhaps the heat, although that cave was by then, in the shade.

Someone stopped to ask us what we were looking at and told us that one of the 3 Bald Eagles at the nest at MP 15.5, had taken his first flight on Sunday, but 2 remained at the nest, that day. We decided to head up there to watch. Sure enough, one chick after the other stood on an edge of the nest and flapped enough to lift off a bit - it was exciting and had drawn a bit of a crowd (much to the chagrin of a grumpy ranch owner across the way, who didn't want anyone parking in front of his gates, not even for EAGLES). We discovered some bighorn sheep in the grassy, sage-y area across from the eagle nest, and laughed watching 3 rams practice up for the rut ! Some young people emerged from the river with rafts in tow and decompressed the rafts, packed up and took off in their truck, leaving us alone to face the wrath of the aforementioned landowner. After telling us to leave, and not finding our snail speed quick enough for him, he dropped the "sheriff" word to hurry us along, and we did manage to mosey away without getting a shotgun in our faces. I guess bullying goes on everywhere. That left a bad taste in our mouths, so we went off to the Roadside Grill in Ellensburg to alleviate that problem - I did have a nagging thought that, since the Grill is just up Umptanum Rd from the Sheriff's Office, we might get read our rights over our burgers, but we made it quite peacefully through our meal.

Just had to head up Umptanum Rd. a bit, to look for all the usual and maybe an unusual or two - and found both. The light was kind of strange as clouds had moved in but the sun still was effectively creating a strange darkening haze over all the birds we tried to view. So we were unable to distinguish which types of bluebirds we were seeing. Every bird looked black as there was silhouetting going on. It was strange. Our stand-out bird events on Ump. Rd. were a robin/Red-tailed Hawk duo that pretty much ignored each other, a Western Kingbird which divebombed and strafed the redtail, and finally drove it off. But my most exhilarating moment came when I heard a vaguely familiar bird call coming from the sagebrush - took me a minute to realize it sounded just like the fledgling LEOW I had heard (and seen) 2 years ago !!! The bird was in the grass and kept moving around, begging for food, but I never saw it - would have had to climb up on a hill in the 40 mph wind that had sprung up, to look further for the presumed owlet, and just didn't feel like getting blown over on my beak, EVEN FOR AN OWL !!!

The wind suddenly dropped back to breeze-strength and we left Umptanum for Canyon Rd., for another run to MP4-ish, to see how the Barn Owls were doing. So glad we did. We could see the white forms of the 4 owlets, so they were all still there, hissing away, and doing some bobbing and a lot of flapping. Around 10, after we proclaimed to the owlets that we were about to leave, they started hissing up a storm and, as I speedily rushed back to the scope, I saw an adult come by the nest cave - didn't see whether or not it dropped off prey. The adult then kept flying around the cliff area, and started the usual Barn Owl shrieking - maybe it paid off, because soon there was some "kleaking", either from that first adult or from the second one that also joined in on the feeding event. Then, suddenly it was over - the 4 owlets were still in the cave and we left for Seattle.

A few other nice birdnesses of the day: saw and heard (including the 'booming' sound), quite a few nighthawks, along the river, MP4-ish, and along Umptanum Rd. Also heard poorwills calling to one another, Canyon Wrens, Rock Wrens and Western Wood Pewees. The most common bird calls and songs we heard were courtesy of American Robins.

Here is the link to the photos I took on this outing: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZanjDo

Barb Deihl
Matthews Beach Neighborhood - NE Seattle
barbdeihl at comcast.net


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