March 15th - Douglas Creek to the Columbia

 

Good morning!

Fun. I hadn't tried to drop a video in here before, but it looks like this worked. It isn't much, but listen closely, and you'll hear one of the Western Screech-Owls that was hanging around my campsite. It was bird number 98 for the year, and a code 4 bird (see the page for "Douglas County Birds - by the numbers" for the meaning of the codes.) Actually, sorry parenthetical note, I do want to talk about code 4 birds for a second. 

Code 3 birds are birds that are seen annually, but are a bit of a challenge to find. They either have a very specific location, small window where they come through, small numbers, or some combination of the three. Code 4 birds are birds that are not seen annually, but have 5 or more sightings historically. Ostensibly, this means that they don't live there... but you'll find them on occasion. 

This might be my favorite kind of bird to find - there are actually a couple bread crumbs of patterns to follow. In this case it was a single eBird sighting from a few years back. I figured it was worth a try, as I'd put in a good effort looking for Barred Owls the previous day. But I went to bed without hearing any Western Screech-Owls. 

These guys (as you can hear) are so soft and quiet with their calls that I was a little worried I was dreaming. But once every. . . half hour? hour? Who knows as I slept in my tent. I heard them calling again briefly. Some time around 6, I decided to get up.

Getting up out of a sleeping bag on a cold morning of camping is always a Big Decision. I met the resistance with a long walk through the plan, visualizing it to the end, where I was standing in the sunlight, holding a cup of coffee and eating some oatmeal as I listened to the canyon waking up. It was finally compelling enough to get up - from preheating my clothes with my own body heat in the sleeping bag, to the walk in the dark up to my car for the coffee. I was lucky enough to get the recording, quite a challenge given the intermittent calls. 

Down the canyon

End of the road for now

Oh! I also had Chukar (99) calling in the morning. These birds called while it was dark, and then not again. I feel like I'm always missing them, and maybe that is a piece of an explanation for it. I may start looking for them at owl o'clock.

I knew that Slack Canyon only went so far South before it dead-ended, but I'd never gone beyond this part of the road, so I did a morning walk south along the road. It was a decently wrenny morning -  Bewick's and Canyon Wrens continued, and I even had a Pacific Wren singing in the brush, a code 3 bird that had been a challenge to find in February. 

There were several primitive campsites along the way. I may try one of them down the road, although I do feel a little romantically attached to my campsite, more so because of the owls from the morning. I hit a couple washouts along the way - places where it looked like all of Badger Mountain was sending its melted snow to run in a river over the trail. One of these was kind of passable for me, but the second was not. I have a hunch the "actual" washout is farther down the trail, but that will be a question for a drier day.

Up the canyon

I got camp picked up... actually pretty quickly. I'm pretty happy with my tent deconstruction routine. I then drove the car a little bit up the road to a signed trailhead, and thought I'd see how far North this would take me. 

They've got great signs on the trail. Right now, I'm trying to find a way to present this fact like... "You really should go look at them!" This is largely to cover up for the fact that my picture of this trail sign was botched a little bit, but I'll present it anyway:

And I know you're wondering... what kind of an idiot even bothers to post pictures this poor? This kind of idiot right here! Even I am excited to go back and see what the top of the sign says though. I'll count it as a good movie trailer. 

The geology of the place is pretty amazing. It's a good place to see columnar basalt and pillow basalt up close. The pillow basalt similarly had some signage explaining that these rocks formed deep underwater. Like... under the sea. And here I was on top of a huge plateau, next to a mountain on that plateau, walking alongside a creek that had cut down through the rock layers (although most of the work had been done by ice age floods here, I believe).

Douglas Creek Trail with pillow basalt

But this used to be under the sea. 

I looked at the rocks with new respect. 

The final new year bird for the day... number 100... drum roll please for the Century Bird!

Marsh Wren - 100

On the one hand, I do want to apologize. On the other hand. . . am I taking pictures so that people will know what a Marsh Wren looks like? Pictures to have a pretty picture of a Marsh Wren? Documentation? At what point do any of these wishes bring my day to a halt? Folks, we're about a quarter of the way through the year, and hopefully no more than halfway through the birds I'm going to find this year. The tour bus is making a stop now, and it might be a good time to exit! :D But if you stay after Marsh Wren, I promise to at least keep typing about these trips.

The rest of the day

I left Douglas Creek, and made a perfunctory stop at Ankeny Boat Launch. It's a tiny little corner of Banks Lake that is in Douglas County. One could imagine that all kinds of birds float over from Grant County now and then. Why there are even reports which have included some neat birds there. I just happened to stop and find no birds there at all. This approximately matched my first visit there in January. But in this kind of year, I have to stupidly believe that this is a wonderful site... and it's just been bad timing. 

Highway 17 heads North from here towards Bridgeport. This is a neat little stretch with the occasional pond. Some of them have names, and I may learn them, but I'm not sure this particular one had a name, where I stopped and found my first Redheads (101) of the year.

These are ponds I'll be visiting in April, with dreams of shorebirds and a few more ducks (Cinnamon Teal, Northern Shoveler). Many of them are well placed for a car to pull safely off of the road and view from the car. 

After a bend to the Northwest, Highway 17 is accompanied by East Foster Creek for a long stretch. The creek winds back and forth under the highway at times, and just really looked like it might be hiding a Virginia Rail or two in several places. I collected no observations to support this belief.

I did at one point follow my vehicle's GPS, which placed a blue blob on the map down a side road - Hayes Road. I arrived, and was pleasantly surprised by some Tundra Swans. 

Tundra Swans - Hayes Lake

I just named that Hayes Lake because it was on Hayes Road. Don't ask the locals for directions to Hayes Lake. 

I stopped at Bridgeport Bar, hoping to find some sparrows, or perhaps some geese. A Harris's Sparrow had been seen here recently, and Lincoln's and Golden-crowned would not have been a surprise. I found White-crowned and Song Sparrows, but nothing unusual. As I headed towards the water, I saw a raft with hundreds upon hundreds of American Wigeon. A careful look through them pulled up two Eurasian Wigeons (102).

I looked at a Eurasian Wigeon in my binoculars, then scanned over to the other. I put the binoculars down and looked at the giant raft, and squinted. I picked up my camera and pointed it at the raft, enjoying the view of hundreds of little dots. I put the camera down and looked at the Eurasian Wigeon again in binoculars. Then I just gave up, pointed the camera in the general part of the raft where I thought the Eurasians were, moved the camera a little left, a little right, and shot some pictures figuring certainly I'd have a picture of at least one of them. . . 

You're free to look through the pictures for a Eurasian Wigeon as well. You're looking for a male with red on the face, rather than green. I'm not encouraging this because I need help finding it. It's not there. But it's just a chance to experience this as I experienced it, to say "Wow... he took pictures of  A LOT of birds that were not the birds he was aiming for. How...?"

It's nice at least to get a feel for how big these American Wigeon rafts can get. I'd only had relatively smaller groups so far this year, and was hoping to have some to pick through at some point. Eurasian Wigeons will find their way in with the Americans starting here in March, and increasingly in April before heading North.

The rest of the rest of the day

I saved the "best" for last. A Yellow-billed Loon had been sighted on the Columbia and had lingered around for several weeks. It had been seen as far south as Orondo, and as far North as the Pateros area, viewed from Starr Road in Okanogan County. A lot of people went off to chase this bird, and a lot of people found it. Others I spoke to spent much of a day wandering up and down the Columbia fruitlessly looking for the bird. 

Looking ahead to this trip, I realized the safest bet for finding the loon would have been to target it at the start of my trip. Looking back at this trip, I don't regret the plan at all. Had I started the trip with the YBLO and spent the good part of a day on a fruitless search. . . when would I have decided to stop looking? After an hour? Two? I left this bird for "dessert", I suppose. I ended up with no dessert, but that's fine. Actually, that's a lie. 

"Sir, I'm sorry, but we are all out of the Yellow-billed Loon this evening. Could we interest you in a Pacific Loon?"

In my wander up and down Starr Road, and to the Starr Boat Launch, I found many Western Grebes (103), Red-necked Grebes in breeding plumage, a California Gull (104), and a single Pacific Loon (105). The Pacific, while not quite as rare, was still a code 3 bird, and a happy find to finish the trip. These were on the far side of the Columbia, over in Douglas County - always an important consideration for a list like this, but also a reason why I have no pictures that I thought were worth including. . . and we already know where the bar is for me.  

I slipped back into Douglas County to follow the highway down to East Wenatchee. I grabbed two enormous bags of apples (a mix of Cosmic Crisp, Honeycrisp, and Fuji) at 5 dollars each at. . . you know, that one fruit stand on Highway 97. The one with the money jar sitting out for people to drop cash in as they pick up their apples? Yes, that one.

And then home. 

Side/ending note: At one point I set my camera down...looked at the water for a bit... and then went merrily down the road about 5-10 miles... got out and looked at the water for a bit... and thought "I should take a picture". I then thought "Hm. Where's my camera?" As with the bags of apples, sitting in plain view on the side of the road, waiting for someone to just take them, my camera was not swept away by neer-do-wells. Phew!