Skip to main content

Shorebirds and Boreal Birds and Butterflies in Washington State

 

On August 17, I began the 1500-mile drive north to visit my brother, who lives in Burton in interior British Columbia. I was planning to do some birding in Washington State to get a few new state birds on the way up. My initial goal was to see the three remaining shorebirds that occur at more or less annually in the state that I had not seen, followed by a visit to the boreal forests in the extreme NE corner of the state.

I arrived in WA around 4 pm on Aug 18 and proceeded to check out some ponds near Pasco for shorebirds. The water levels and viewing angles were not that great and the best were four Solitary Sandpipers I saw flying off.  At that point, I decided to drive to another set of ponds about an hour away that had some good recent ebird lists. Upon arrival, I saw no fewer than five Solitary Sandpipers in a single scan, as well as a Semipalmated Sandpiper in with the Leasts and Westerns, both yellowlegs and Black-necked Stilts. All very nice but not what I was hoping to see. One of the best ebird lists had mentioned that the totals included the ‘restricted access areas’ and, figuring that at 7 pm there would likely be no enforcement, I drove in on some gravel tracks to view some other ponds.

The first pond gave me the trifecta of needed shorebirds with four American Avocets, five Wilson’s Phalaropes and two juveniles Stilt Sandpipers, in among many other shorebirds, including numerous Lesser Yellowlegs and a single Baird’s Sandpiper. The next ponds added even more shorebirds, including three Pectoral Sandpipers. In total, I ended up with over 40 Lesser Yellowlegs. A very productive hour’s birding.

I drove another two hours to Spokane and got a hotel for the night. Since it was over a two-hour drive to reach the boreal forest habitat and I was burned out from two days of near constant driving, I spent the next morning relaxing in the hotel prior to gassing up the car and buying some bear spray.

In mid-afternoon, I reached the boreal forest habitat on the higher slopes of Salmo Mountain. I was especially hoping to see Boreal Chickadee, American Three-toed Woodpecker and White-winged Crossbill, all of which were state birds. I also hoped to see Spruce Grouse, which is a species I had only seen three times previously.  A major highlight on the drive-up were two very confiding Ruffed Grouse, although these were unfortunately on the wrong side of the car for a photograph. There were also spectacular numbers of nymphalid butterflies with a few hundred Green Commas, with smaller numbers of Zephyr Commas, California Tortoiseshells, Mourning Cloaks and Lorquin’s Admirals.

Lorquin's Admiral

Green (or Faunus) Comma

Once up in the boreal forest zone, the birding proved rather frustrating, with a steady diet of Mountain Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Dark-eyed Juncos. A few warblers included a Nashville and I had a flyby flock of four Evening Grosbeaks. The best were nice looks at Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Clark’s Nutcracker and Townsend’s Solitaire. I eventually tracked down an odd nasal call to a Pika. Persistence finally paid off when I had mediocre views of a Boreal Chickadee, but an evening drive along the forest road for a few miles drew a blank on Spruce Grouse.

Pika

I managed a reasonable night’s sleep in the car and repeated the forest road drive at dawn with similarly negative results. I then began to walk along the road, hoping to run into more birds. Almost immediately, I had a male Pine Grosbeak fly into a treetop, and shortly afterwards, had two more fly over calling. I had a few audio and visual encounters with crossbills, but the birds were too distant to specifically identify. Individuals of both Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks appeared, but I missed the Goshawk seen by some other birders.

Three-Toed Woodpecker

I had been detecting a lot more woodpecker activity compared to the previous afternoon and eventually was successful in finding a drumming Three-toed Woodpecker, shortly followed by a Hairy Woodpecker. I also ran into a couple of family parties of Gray (Canada) Jays. Finally, some solid boreal bird action.

Gray Jay

Getting back to the trailhead, I hiked out along the Salmo Basin Trail. I had a couple more Pine Grosbeaks, but as ever they stayed high up. Further along, I found a nice mixed flock with both kinglets and multiple warbler species. Even better, I had good looks at a Boreal Chickadee. With bird activity now quieting down, I decided to head down the mountain and drive to my brother’s.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Short “Baja Break”

  I was originally scheduled for a weeklong trip out on Santa Barbara Island to look for migrant birds but the government shutdown put paid to that. As an antidote to this disappointment, I decided to make a quick 3.5 day to northern Baja California (BCN). The main motive was to try to add a Blackpoll Warbler to my Mexico list, as there had been a few moving through southern California in recent days. I was also expecting to make a few additions to my BCN list, depending on which migrants or vagrants showed up. Kurt and Cindy Radamaker generously allowed me to stay with them at Bajamar and I arrived there on Saturday evening. The next morning, we headed down to Parque Riviera in Ensenada where a Blackpoll Warbler had been reported a couple of days previously, along with a Virginia’s (a BCN tick). Needless to say, a thorough check of the park, assisted by Carrizo Plains birder Russ Namitz, drew a blank. A Merlin was the highlight. Ironically, Russ was also in Baja as a result of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Utqiagvik (Barrow): Days Two through Four

  The next day we birded mostly the same areas as previously, discovering one or two more spots either through our own initiative or by following up RBAs. We also invested time in accurately counting most of the birds we saw, with the exception being Greater White-fronted Goose, which may have been the commonest bird present, Long-tailed Duck, Snow Bunting and Lapland Longspur. Song-flighting Lapland Longspurs were one of my most vivid memories from my first visit and this species is still common today. Lapland Longspur The eider show continued with totals of 20 Steller’s and 14 Spectacled. We counted 493 Red Phalaropes but just 41 Red-necked Phalaropes. Semipalmated Sandpiper was the most numerous calidrid by far, but by checking multiple locations, we came up with five White-rumped and three Stilt Sandpipers, along with small numbers of Pectoral and Western Sandpipers, Dunlin, Long-billed Dowitcher, Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderling. News then broke of a male Brambling in the airp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Neotropic Cormorant and a Vexing Booby

Apologies for the long break since my last post, but the second half of July was uninspiring. The first two weeks of August were then very busy as I had 5 days of work, followed by my daughter’s wedding. Bird wise, in late July the only minor highlight was a large concentration of 700 or more Elegant Terns at the Santa Maria River Estuary that attracted a few other tern species. I made a couple of visits there and saw up to four Common Terns, mostly first-summers as well as a few Forster’s and the breeding Least Terns. Unfortunately, a Sooty Tern that graced Arroyo Grande, just a few miles to the north of the SMRE, did not put an appearance in Santa Barbara County. I then found another first-summer Common Tern on the beach at Devereux. A couple of days later, I made another trip to Devereux with Hugh Ranson and Mark Bright. Although we did not see the bird in the field, Mark later noticed an apparently much smaller cormorant in a distant photograph of some Double-cresteds, quite po...
Post a Comment
Read more