A Long but Scenic Drive Home and One That Got Away

 

After waking up at dawn, I tidied up my sleeping gear in my car and headed over to Sun Mountain Lodge near Winthrop. This location has acquired a reputation as the go-to spot for Dusky Grouse in Washington. While the pressure was off since I had just finally seen one in BC, it would still be a ‘Washington bird’ for me and only the second time I had seen the species.

Arriving at the parking lot, it was immediately apparent that the hotel grounds and immediate vicinity were very birdy, with numerous Pine Siskins, Cassin’s Finches, Mountain Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches evident. I was surprised and skeptical to see what looked like a female Purple Finch in with the Cassin’s but eventually had at least two birds and heard their characteristic ‘pik’ flight calls. Multiple flyover sightings of Red Crossbills and Evening Grosbeaks rounded a nice set of montane finches.

The hilltop position and irrigated green lawns and lush tree foliage likely made the location a minor migrant trap and after finding Warbling Vireo, Yellow, Wilson’s, and Yellow-rumped Warblers, I saw a relatively bright empid that I suspected might be a Hammond’s, which molt into fresh plumage prior to migration unlike other western empids. The bird declined to give decent looks and decided to try some playback. I opted first to try Dusky Flycatcher and immediately a bird flew in give much better views, although it was not the empid I had just been watching, being much duller in plumage tones. Although it did not call, I was able to note the short primary projection, long tail and longish bill with a dark outer half to confirm a Dusky. It lacked the more washed-out grayish appearance of a Gray Flycatcher. A burst of mobbing playback brought the other empid back out and I could confirm it was indeed a Hammond’s. Singles of Olive-sided Flycatcher and Western Wood Pewee completed the flycatcher list.

The grounds were also good for sparrows with Vesper and Brewer’s in the sagebrush and Chipping and Lincoln’s in the lawn area. Heading over to the far side of the grounds where they drop towards a slope with scattered conifers, I was entertained by a group of eight flycatching Lewis’s Woodpeckers. This species is one of my favorite birds. It was originally called Lewis’s Crow and when you see one flying around, you will know why.

Dusky Grouse

Heading towards the hot tub area, I saw a grouse jump up on to the top of the surrounding fence. A very confiding Dusky Grouse. Some low hooting drew my attention to a second individual feeding on the flower bed around the hot tub. I had seen this vocal behavior in BC and suspected that this was an adult female and her one surviving young.

After a productive start to the day, I embarked on a two-to-three-hour drive to reach some good areas for montane woodpeckers. I abandoned my first planned stop for White-headed Woodpecker due to smoke from a forest fire. This proved a wise choice as the smoke cleared not much further to the south and I then checked out a burn area near Cle Elum. There was not much activity in the afternoon heat, and nothing was responding to playback. Reverting to the time-honored technique of listening for tapping sounds, I eventually began to tot up Hairy Woodpeckers and, after finding four of these, some more tapping led me to a nice male Black-backed Woodpecker.

I decided to spend the balance of daylight in my hotel room and woke up the next day to drive up to Wenas Camp. There were plenty of birds around, with Cassin’s Finches and Red-breasted Nuthatches everywhere. I had at least eight Western Bluebirds to complement the Mountain Bluebirds I had seen on the drive in. White-breasted and Pygmy Nuthatches completed the nuthatch set, while I had no less than three Cassin’s Vireos, all singing. Eventually I came to grips with the target bird – a pair of White-headed Woodpeckers, which give pretty good looks.

I ended choosing a marginal spot for my next target woodpecker – Williamson’s Sapsucker – and missed it. However, I should have no problem catching up with this cracking bird on a return trip to eastern Washington.

I then drove along 12 all the way to the coast at Ocean Shores on the N side of Grays Harbor. I used the late afternoon to bird the famed Game Range, only to find it bone dry with no shorebirds at all. I found a side road to crash in the car for the night with a plan to bird the beach areas along the coast north of Grays Harbor, which have produced shorebird rarities in recent years.

The initial beaches proved underwhelming but things improved when I hit Roosevelt Beach. There were over a hundred birds here, including two Baird’s Sandpipers. Copala Beach, where I only had time to cover 30% of the area, looked even more promising and I had a couple more Baird’s. I had to head on to catch the tide at Bowerman Basin, an area I had never properly birded before. I did catch the rising tide right and there was a massive concentration of Western Sandpipers – I guesstimated about 9000 – along with small numbers of Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers. The low diversity was disappointing, but I can see this location having good potential for a Red-necked Stint in late June/July. The nearby Hoquiam Sewage Ponds had a Ruff but it was hanging out on vegetated bank and my arrival to look for the bird coincided with a nasty rain squall. After failing to find the bird in a couple of minutes of looking, I decided to move to make sure I still had high tide conditions at Tokeland on the north side of Willapa Bay. I arrived there to find a large concentration of roosting birds at the marina, consisting of 1500 Marbled Godwits, 160 Greater Yellowlegs and a couple of dozen dowitchers of both species. I quickly found a Bar-tailed Godwit in the Marbled flock, which is a normal occurrence here. However, further detailed scanning produced no more Bar-taileds and no Willets, which often occur here as well.

Bar-tailed Godwit

After an enjoyable hour or so at Tokeland and with the tide clearly dropping, I drove further round to Bay Center on the east shore of Willapa Bay, where both Bar-tailed and Hudsonian Godwits had been reported the previous day. Although the birds here tend to be quite distant, the numbers are very high. I ran into another birder there, but neither of us could pull out the Hudsonian Godwit. There were three Bar-tailed Godwits in with a few hundred Marbleds, 22 Long-billed Curlews, two Willets and 38 Red Knots. I did not attempt to count the numbers of Black-bellied Plovers, dowitchers and peeps. Although large shorebirds species such as godwits, Willets and curlews are unremarkable along the California coast, they are largely absent in Oregon and Washington and Willapa Bay is by far the best place to see them regularly and more than just odd birds.

Despite the misses on the Ruff and the Hudsonian Godwit, which I had found myself during earlier visits to the state, I had had an enjoyable afternoon and drove on to Ilwaco to stay in my hotel. The next day I was going to do a massive hike starting along the ocean side of Leadbetter Point, one of my favorite birding spots, and going out towards the tip before coming down the bay side of the spit to catch the shorebirds flocks coming in to feed on the dropping tide. This is a 10-12 mile with some stretches of mud and soft sand. Normally I do a shorter, but still grueling, hike just up the bay side of the spit.

The extended hike proved to be a major mistake as there were no shorebirds at all roosting on the ocean side of the spit, just small numbers of gulls and pelicans. I started to get seriously worried I would arrive after the tide had dropped too much but saved some time by cutting across the extreme tip of the point and force-marching myself through some soft sandy bays. These bays at least held some birds including 11 Baird’s Sandpipers and I arrived at the main area of mudflats with about 10 minutes to spare before they began to expose.

The initial arrivals were Western and Least Sandpipers, but the main interest is typically when the large numbers of Black-bellied Plovers and (formerly) Short-billed Dowitchers arrive. These flocks, as usual, contained Red Knots (22), three Ruddy and one Black Turnstone and a surprise Surfbird. I counted over 500 Black-bellied Plovers but Short-billed Dowitcher, which 35 years ago would have been present in hundreds, barely reached 20 birds.

The low saltmarsh vegetation is a good area to search for golden plovers and vagrant Buff-breasted Sandpipers. A thorough search failed to turn anything up although I eventually found a Pacific Golden-Plover feeding on the mudflats with some Black-bellieds, while a couple of Long-billed Curlews were unusual for Leadbetter. There were no godwits present and they are only erratic visitors to the point.

After dealing with the soft mud on the creek crossings as I staggered back to the parking area, I swore never to do the hike out via the outer point again with the caveat that I might repeat it if there were to be a good Snowy Owl winter. I reached the car totally exhausted and drank a lot of water and downed a couple of small packs of salt to prevent any cramping attacks. A two-hour drive got me to my hotel in Garibaldi in Tillamook County in Oregon. I jumped in the shower to get off all the sand and mud before flopping down onto the bed for a well-deserved rest.

The next day, I made a latish start and drove the length of the Oregon coast, enjoying the great scenery, especially from Cape Perpetua southwards. I stopped for a late lunch in Bandon. I drove out to the south jetty hoping to find a nice variety of rockpipers in the high tide roos, but there was not a single one there. This formerly great site has been rendered largely birdless by government environmental edicts that prevent dairies from discharging their effluent directly into the Coquille River upstream. As a result, the rich foodchain enabled by all the cow slurry disappeared, along with the shorebirds. I was hoping that the rockpipers might have avoided the declines of the mudflat species, but evidently not.

Crossing the border into Del Norte County, I began to head out towards Lake Tolowa, an often exceptional shorebird site, although water levels are not so good this fall as of yet. However, it became apparent that it was one of those days with very high NNW winds, which can happen along the northern California and southern Oregon coasts. Since I had already arranged to catch up with some friends in the (San Francisco) Bay Area the following afternoon, it wasn’t practical to overnight at Lake Tolowa and bird it the next day as the limited decent habitat required a moderate hike. Combined with the long drive, I wouldn’t get to the Bay Area at a reasonable time. So I pushed on down to Humboldt County and slept in the car next to the Ocean Ranch unit on the Eel River delta. Back in the early 90s, this was an area of freshwater impoundments that could be very good for migrant shorebirds. In subsequent years, they have kept the water levels higher through the fall and it hasn’t been suitable for shorebirds.

Waking up in the morning, I hiked out on the trail hoping to find perhaps a little exposed mud. What I found was that the area had been reopened to tidal influence and was now just another set of tidal creeks. These held the expected common shorebirds but nothing of interest. After exploring for an hour here, I headed further south to the Russ Ranch Wetlands near Ferndale. This has had a number of great birds in the past, although recent reports were not that promising.

Walking out to the wetlands, there was a little suitable habitat for birds in some sections that were mostly dried out but I just saw Least and Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and five Red-necked Phalaropes. After a few minutes, I heard an unfamiliar series of ‘weet’ and ‘weet-weet’ notes that were not from any of the regular west coast shorebirds. I picked up a bird in flight that was roughly the size of a large calidrid. My initial guess was that bird was going to be Buff-breasted Sandpiper – based on the date, bird’s size and unfamiliar call – proved wrong as once I got the binoculars on the bird, it was clearly generally similar to a Pectoral. Fortunately, it landed about 70 yards away and I quickly got the scope on it.

I confirmed it was a ‘Pectoral-like’ bird and it was immediately apparent that the bird was not in fresh juvenile plumage, with no sign of pale braces or crisp covert edges. It lacked the solid dark breastband of a Pectoral although there were some darker wash/markings on the sides of the breast. It also showed an obvious pale supercilium, which is typically not present on adult Pectorals. Given the odd call, I was already actively considering an adult Sharp-tailed Sandpiper and a couple more suggestive features were a rufous wash on the forecrown and some dark spots with pointed rear edges on the sides of the lower breast. The legs were a dull olive, which is good for a Sharp-tailed as well as Pectorals often, but not always, have yellower legs. Unfortunately, after viewing the bird for about 15 seconds, all the shorebirds flushed off and flew far out to see. A few did eventually return but were immediately chased off by a Peregrine. After an hour I had to leave with no sign of the birds returning. I texted local birder Rob Fowler that I had a very probable adult Sharp-tailed Sandpiper and wrote it up in ebird with an intention to look into more once I had internet access for my computer.

In subsequent investigation, it became clear that the bird was in largely basic-like plumage, whereas the August adult photos I viewed seemed to show birds still with extensive alternate plumage. I came to the conclusion that the bird was most likely a first-summer bird that had acquired a few chevron markings on its breast sides but not much else of alternate plumage. Annoyingly, I had failed to note whether the bird had a prominent pale eye-ring or not and I felt I should have probably noticed this feature anyway. Given the relatively brief looks and the fact I couldn’t match up the bird with close equivalent photo in Macauley (although I only looked at few dozen), I decided to downgrade it to a calidris sp. There is always the possibility it was some kind of weird hybrid. Very frustrating, but that is birding for you sometimes.