June 4th - "The Yoozh", June Edition

Rock Island Dam - one of the usual views at the start of any trip

It really has become quite usual at this point. I head across the pass, cross the Columbia at Vantage, then slide up through Quincy into Douglas County. I suppose that this time around there was a greater focus on a couple birds to start the trip off on this warm summer afternoon:

A couple birds

These were wild-goose-chase kinds of birds, I thought. Both Forster's Tern and Black-crowned Night Heron have popped up in the county in June. Why not try for them in this little corner of the county where the Nature Mapping folks have decided that there's some good habitat? 

They both puzzled me a little - what's wrong with this bend of the Columbia North of the area shown? Deep thoughts for another day. On this day, I pulled in on Spanish Castle Road (gonna be a heck of a development some day), and followed the primitive-road-no-warning-signs extension to the Apricot Orchard Boat Launch. 

Interesting little spot, and I decided I could at least understand the heron bit. There was lots of tight vegetation along the Columbia here. There was definitely a lot on the Chelan/Kittitas side across the river as well. The launch itself is for small craft - probably a nice place to push in with a kayak or canoe and explore South down to Crescent Bar (a place in Grant County that I've never really birded!).

A little trail led up behind the restrooms, and this time of year, I was mindful of the possibility of rattlesnakes. I've seen so few in my life, which I guess is good, but also means that I don't have a good sense of when I may stumble on one. 

My mindfulness paid off: 

Robber Fly

Okay, it's not a Rattlesnake, and not even a thing where I could have been bitten unless I really tried. These little guys actually eat other insects - butterflies, bees, beetles, dragonflies - whatever they can take down. They inject them with toxins and suck out the melted bug juices. I got to see some quite horrific scenes where this played out, and will not likely repeat this Google search.

Trail behind Apricot Orchard Boat Launch

Showy Milkweed - Asclepias speciosa

Bird-wise, Lazuli Bunting, American Goldfinch, California Quail, and Western Kingbird were present, and as I walked I also stirred up a heron from the river...!! but just a Great Blue Heron, not the Black-crowned Night-Heron I was hoping for. The Columbia was pretty empty as well, although I did enjoy the fact that I could see Crescent Bar from this spot.

The flowers have been changing, and it's been a few months of beautiful new stuff popping up. At right is Showy Milkweed, which apparently is an important plant for migrating Monarch butterflies.

Hydro Park - ish

I continued up the road, first making some quick stops at the ponds around Rock Island. Hideaway Lake had some Wood Ducks, and all of them were full of swallows, but nothing new for the year for me. Then I hit a neighborhood near the Hydro Park between East Wenatchee and Rock Island. This is a spot where California Scrub-Jays have been seen, and it has been easy enough to drop the windows and do a quick drive-and-listen through the neighborhood. 

So... here's how the trouble started. I heard a Bushtit call. At home, any time in my life that I've heard a Bushtit call, it's been Bushtits. So I stopped the car. I had planned so meticulously for this trip, looking over possible species, and Bushtit was not on my list. That said, much like California Scrub-Jays, they have been poking farther and farther East over time at a semi-glacial pace:

So what does a guy do? I didn't feel confused about the sighting, but was also in a neighborhood, and didn't necessarily want to pull out a camera or binoculars. It was a Bushtit! It would show itself eventually. I tried recording audio, but could pick up none of the calls when I reviewed it later. The bird called its single "spik" note a few dozen times from inside the tree, and then apparently moved along to another tree via the backside. 

I left thinking I had usable audio - whoops and oh well. I've spent a good few days thinking this one over, and talking to the best devil's advocates I could find, to suggest *anything* that I would agree could sound like a Bushtit, and I've found nothing that could fit. Even considering all of the birds that are in and around the neighborhood, and how any number of them could be nesting and have young begging at nest, I decided to stick with Bushtit (171 for the year). 

Lists are funny, sticky things! People take a lot of pride in them (I do!), and there's nothing like photo/video/audio documentation, multiple observers, etc. etc. For me, this was something I was confident with for my list. I got it tossed into the community, and hopefully more will be seen in Douglas County in the future - not unlikely in that very area - but this is a pin I wouldn't expect to see on eBird until that day comes, given that it is a description of a fairly simple sound. 

If nothing else, as we hit the half point of this endeavor, I hope one of the goals of this blog is accomplished - transparency. No records will be set or broken in Douglas this year by this birder, but I'm hopeful that even this little tangent on Bushtits leads to a better understanding of the birds out there, and where to look for them. 

East Wenatchee

I did want to shoot off some communications about the sighting, and wanted to see if any other fun sightings had shown up on eBird, so I popped into the Starbucks in East Wenatchee to get the laptop plugged in. I knew this might be my last chance to be plugged in for a couple days. The Apple Blossom Festival was happening in Wenatchee, so hotel prices had gone through the roof, and friends who might have offered couches already had company or were out of town. My plan was to head up to Badger Mountain and find a safe pulloff on a backroad to sleep in the car for the night, and try for owls. 

I grabbed a few last things for the road, and then hit it. 

Quick stop - Porter's Pond. I stopped at this little spot on the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail (I think I got all five of those right?), and had Spotted Sandpipers, and an Osprey flying with a huge fish in its bill, chased by two quite optimistic crows. 

From there, I got in a breathtaking argument with my GPS about how to get up Badger Mountain (I was right, but made sure not to gloat... too much).

Badger Mountain

Insert Owl here

If you head back to March, you can find the first descriptions of Redfield Road and my fascination with the area as a possible place for Barred Owls. I thought, given that it would be my "hotel" for the night, I'd head up the road a bit farther. I additionally picked Melvin Road as a destination, since a little plot of BLM land would make me feel a little better about parking my car for the night. 

As I got to Redfield and was approaching areas I'd been to in March, I caught some traffic in the form of a truck. We were both stirring up a bit of dust, so I pulled over to the side of the road. It was getting a bit dark at this point, so I decided to pop out of the car and try for Barred Owl. I gave a call and immediately had two owls circle the road above me!

I got the binoculars out and got an obscured view of one of them as it landed on a tree branch above me. Vertical barring on the chest... rounded face... I was so excited with my Barred Owl, that for a good five to ten seconds, it didn't matter to me that I was looking at a Long-eared Owl. I mean... yeah, it was odd that it had dark facial patterning, and that the other one just said "whoo" from the trees behind it, and that this Barred Owl pair was right where I had found Long-eared Owls back in March.

Take 5-10 seconds now and enjoy some ignorant bliss with me.

Wasn't that nice! Now have a laugh, and enjoy the fact that I was enjoying the best view I'd had in my life of a Long-eared Owl, before it too went back into the dense pines. 

Common Poorwills (172) were at this point calling all around - certainly my best experience with that species. They remain a heard-only species for me, even though I had really hoped to get some red eye-shine from one sitting on the road as I drove. Plenty of moths on the road clarified how they get their meals. 

Another owl (!) went flying across the road, and disappeared as I continued in twilight along Melvin Road. I passed under some powerlines, up a stretch of road I may not have driven again, hindsight being what it is, and found a place to park for the night.