January 19 - Okanogan Highlands

The alarm went off at 5 a.m., so that we could breakfast at the motel.  The Omak Inn’s offerings consist of waffles and/or biscuits and gravy, along with cereals, yogurt and fruit, breads and bagels, and such.  Not bad at all, except for pretty weak coffee.  My Dad used to tell me that “… most people camp too close to the creek to make decent coffee.”

We arrived along Fancher Flats road at dawn, which has been a good spot to see Chukars in years past.  We waited for a while, hearing the morning song of a Canyon Wren from the rimrock above the road.  Then, a pair of Golden Eagles landed on a ponderosa pine snag on the ridge and vocalized with their ringing calls.  Kyle spotted a ‘chicken’ high up on the ridge line, but it was just a silhouette against the mist & gray sky.  This was his “Lifer” sighting of a Chukar, but a fairly unsatisfying one.  Then, the eagles launched from their perches and as they flew, nearly 40 Chukars flushed from the hillside, and several settled close to us for very nice views.

Leaving the Flats, we drove up Siwash Creek Road.  Siwash is a pretty derogatory term for a Native American here in the Pacific Northwest, and I’m a bit surprised that the leadership of the nearby Colville Tribes has not petitioned the County for a name change.  Siwash, is an Anglicization of the French “Sauvage” or Savage!  Perhaps they take pride in it?  Who knows?

Stolen from Dr. Robertson’s Chinook Jargon page at
https://chinookjargon.com/2013/03/27/racially-insensitive-verb/

In any event, we had been successful in previous years in finding the Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse feeding on the buds of the water birch (Betula occidentalis) in the area.  But, it was not to be today.

We scouted around the Okanogan Highlands throughout the morning, and picked up Pygmy Nuthatches, and finding several more large flocks of Cassin’s Finch.

Finches in the Birches

These large flocks of the finches seem pretty unusual, and makes us wonder whether there had been a lack of feed in other areas that resulted in the species making such a good showing here.

At 10 a.m., we pulled into the Highland Sno-Park to call for woodpeckers and a purported Great Gray Owl.  We did not hear an owl, nor see one through the ground fog, but a Black-backed Woodpecker gave us a brief visit.

Why is it always foggy when I'm in the Highlands?

Besides the snow, there was rime ice on the trees, giving them a very “Christmassy” look.  Among the pines and firs, there are a number of trees that appear dead.  But they’re not!  These are the “tamarack” or Western Larch, which lose their needles every fall, and are a deciduous conifer.

Frosty Western Larch Larix occidentalis

Driving out of the Sno-Park we saw a doe and yearling White-tailed Deer of the Columbia Basin subspecies, and a curious Red Squirrel.  The ‘red’ squirrels around here are mostly grey in color, but are all Tamiasciurus hudsonicus.

Red Squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus - not all that red around here

Checking a couple of farmsteads where the residents put out bird seed to feed the winter denizens gave us good looks at species we’d already seen on the trip.

Downy Woodpecker male

Black-capped Chickadee

American Goldfinch male in winter plumage

Suet for lunch . . .

Hairy Woodpecker male

Mountain Chickadee

Shep graciously provides bags of bird seed to several of these folks in exchange for their good will in allowing us birders to stand in their yards to observe “their” birds.

Gifts are Good

The fog lifted here and there, and besides seeing the scenery revealed, we had views of more of the local residents.

We came into the town of Chesaw,

Chesaw History

which often has some of our target birds at feeders and in the habitat along Myers Creek, but it was pretty quiet this afternoon.

We did find our first Northern Shrike on a utility wire above town, which is always a good bird for us West-siders.

We birded around the area until the sun went behind the hills, and headed back toward Chesaw, finding a nice Pygmy Owl

Our Smallest Owl

and a lone Ruffed Grouse.  We drove back toward the Sno-Park.  As the sun set

and the moon came out

Shep’s sharp eye spotted a beautiful Northern Goshawk atop a fir tree, shortly before it headed for its night roost.

Highly enhanced Goshawk photo

The Sno-Park was still fogged-in, and again we did not hear any owl vocalizations.

Still foggy . . . still no Great Grey Owl

We drove back down the mountain and stopped in the town of Tonasket to eat at the Rancho Chico for Mexican food, before returning to Omak for a good night’s sleep.

January 18 - Off to the Okanogan

I got up at 3:50 a.m., and picked up Kyle Leader at his apartment at 5:30 to begin our expedition.  Traffic was light at that hour on I-5 to Highway 512, through Puyallup to Highway 167 to Auburn, where we took Hwy 18 over Tiger Mountain to Interstate 90, stopping at the North Bend Safeway to top off the Subaru’s gas tank and my coffee cup at Starbucks.

We met Shep Thorp, Scott Ramos, and Lee Barnes for the scouting trip to the Okanogan.  Shep leads a Washington Ornithological Society field trip to the area over Presidents’ Day weekend, and next weekend is also leading a field trip for the Clearwater, Florida Audubon Society.  Our goal is to check out the area ‘hotspots’, and attempt to find some of the target birds for each group.  The bird fauna in north central Washington is somewhat different to that in western Washington, due to the influence of the Cascades Mountains’ draining much of the moisture from weather fronts passing over, and due to the higher elevations.  The bird species are significantly different to what the folks from Florida are used to seeing.

We continued over Snoqualmie Pass to Cle Elum, then up to Blewett Pass.  The name of this pass was originally Swauk Pass, but in 1956, the Blewett Pass Highway was rebuilt to go through Swauk Pass and is now the current US 97.  In 1991, Blewett Pass was renamed Swauk Pass by Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and, just a year later, in 1992 Swauk Pass was changed back to Blewett Pass by State and Federal Boards.  You can learn more history by reading the Old Blewett Blog.

We stopped at the Blewett Pass trailhead and immediately heard Red Crossbills calling from the treetops, as well as finches and Mountain Chickadees.  We got our spotting scopes on the finches and found that we were looking at a large flock of Cassin’s Finch.  The eBird program ‘flagged’ the observation, as a high count for the finches.  We also made a stop at the Camas Meadows,

where we saw yet more Cassin’s Finches, heard two types of Red Crossbills, and had a good look at a Hairy Woodpecker. Along the Camas Creek Road Kyle and I saw a Pacific Wren, which is always a fun sighting for the area.

Continuing down the mountain to Wenatchee and across the mighty Columbia River into Douglas County, we stopped at a few side roads and pull-offs to scan for birds.  At the Highway 97 overlook to Entiat Reservoir, the pool behind Chelan PUD’s Rocky Reach Dam, we stopped to scope the river for water birds, seeing flocks of Ruddy Ducks and Coots, and viewed the first pair of Golden Eagles for the day.  We continued up Corbaley Canyon on US Hwy 2, and found yet another pair of Goldens,

and then another, which brought our count to 6 Golden Eagles in about a 10-mile drive.  In Waterville itself,

we worked our way through town giving close looks at folks’ feeders, and found a cooperative Sharp-shinned Hawk ‘sunning’ itself in a birch tree.

But most of the birds seen in town were House Sparrows.

Our winter birding began in earnest as we topped out of the canyon onto the Waterville Plateau,

and sorted through numerous flocks of Horned Larks looking for Snow Buntings or Lapland Longspurs.

I figure that most of the larks are the pale grey Eremophila alpestris arcticola/alpina/lamprochroma subspecies, although maybe 10-20% of a flock would be individuals of the local yellow-faced populations (E. a. merrilli).

Each one of these dots were checked to see if they were anything except Larks

We passed into the small town of Withrow,

where we had seen Bohemian Waxwings in previous years, and indeed found a flock of 14 of these handsome birds.

The locals came out to meet us,

although some were curious about what these out-of-towners were doing here.

We drove north up Heritage Road, looking for a rumored Snowy Owl, but to no avail.  Often, the owls might be seen perching on rock piles or glacial erratics to gain a view over their wind-swept domain.

We did stop at an abandoned farmstead along Heritage to look, also unsuccessfully, for Long-eared Owls,

People actually lived here, back in the day

but did find our first flock of American Tree Sparrows.

A bit further on, we found a flock of larks that had a number of Snow Buntings accompanying it, as well as our first sightings of Mule Deer and California Quail for the trip.  As we dropped off the plateau toward the Okanogan Valley, we sighted our first Great Horned Owl at dusk.

After 13 hours of driving, it was a relief to get out of the car.  We checked into the Omak Inn, which is a little older and worn around the edges, but is a local establishment, as well as being $20-40 a night less expensive than the nearby "name brands".  Supper this evening was at the Bread Line, which has good suppers, and they make their own breads to complement the meal.