June 5th - Badger for Breakfast, and Big Bend Backpacking

 A whole lot of planning and thought led to the realization that the two most productive spots for me were on fairly opposite ends of Douglas County:

I still think the county looks like a cowboy on a bronco...

Waning crescent moon

With this in mind, I started my morning on Melvin Road up on Badger Mountain. Although I had come here in hopes of Barred Owl, I had found at least two Long-eared Owls, as well as a mystery owl flying across the dusty back road in front of me. I woke up to owls as well - a pair of Great Horned Owls calling at almost 4 A.M.. I had actually not slept all that poorly in the car, so after a little more napping, I got out and listened to the morning chorus. 

Common Poorwill, Western Tanager, Western Wood Pewee, Robins and Towhees were pretty constant. I did add a handful of birds to the year list as well, including Cassin's Vireo (173), Nashville Warbler (174), and one of the birds I had really hoped to find in this area, Swainson's Thrush (175)! Listen in on the Nashville Warbler bit, and you can hear Common Poorwills calling as well. It was a fun fun morning chorus, and left me kind of glad that crazy hotel rates had pushed me up here for the morning!

Ruud Canyon

Some species of Paintbrush? unsure!

Ruud Canyon meanders from near the summit of Badger down to the Waterville Plateau, and includes some nice coniferous, deciduous, and even a little bit of sage habitat. I had been here in May on a field trip, and had many of the same birds in the area as I had on my last visit. This time around was a little more focused, and quite early on, I got one of my hoped-for code 3 birds, an Olive-sided Flycatcher (176). I was a little surprised that the West side of Badger would not have these as well, perhaps at the ski area, but birds know what they like!

Cassin's Finches, Western Tanager, Western Wood-Pewees, and Spotted Towhees made most of the noise for the morning. I had Mountain Chickadees, as well, but surprisingly (to me) not much in the way of nuthatches. Other birds that I found back in March (Brown Creeper, Pine Grosbeak, Clark's Nutcracker) had also not been seen since. I've been pretty lucky with my timing!

I wasn't the only one up at this hour

Further down the hill, I actually got my final thrush for the year! (I mean... unless something completely wacky comes through. I'll make a note here later about how I was wrong if a Wood Thrush or Redwing shows up.) Veeries (177) sang from the riparian stretches farther down the canyon. This is my favorite family of birds for sure, so it was awesome to get all of them checked off: 

Western Bluebird: Code 3, April 11th

Mountain Bluebird: Code 2, March 14th

Townsend's Solitaire: Code 3, May 14th

Varied Thrush: Code 2, January 2nd 

Veery: Code 3, June 5th

Swainson's Thrush: Code 3, June 5th

Hermit Thrush: Code 3, February 12th

American Robin: Code 1, January 1st

Yellow-breasted Chat - Ruud Canyon

I had kinda penciled in that I would find one species each month. I have no idea where the actual logic was behind that, but it wasn't so far from off! Just a little ahead of schedule. Why are they my favorite family? The songs. Thrushes have an extra set of vocal chords, so they can do some crazy things. I once had Veery and Swainson's Thrush both singing outside of my tent, and the two of them side by side made for an amazing chorus!

As I broke out onto Baseline Road, I added one more species, Willow Flycatcher (178), which like many of the other adds of the day is just kind of a late-arriver.

Hillsides: sage-steppe? sage-scrub? scrub-steppe?
I'm reliving the time my kids tried to explain what dub-step was.

Waterville STP

Okay, this place is not closed to the public! Signs will deter you, but these are not signs placed by anyone associated with the Sewer Treatment Plant. Why are they there...?

Buffalo!

There's someone who wants to be extra clear that these buffalo are to be left alone, and because they are grazing so close to the STP, this is a reasonable concern. If it deters some ne'er-do-wells from hopping in and buffalo hunting, these are good signs. Birdwatchers, according to the folks who run the STP, are welcome. This was great news, as this is a pretty productive spot, especially for shorebirds!

The coolest thing I got to see here was actually a mating display from the male Ruddy Ducks: 

Male Ruddy Duck

They kick their tail straight up in the air, and... like... bob their head and tail up and down making this cooky sound as they do. Lots of fun. Hope it works. Can't have too many Ruddy Ducks.

I also got a chance to finally pick up some Blue-winged Teals for the year (179).

Male Blue-winged Teal - Waterville STP

As well as a few other birds I had seen previously - just had a chance to get some better pictures of them than back in May: 

Eastern Kingbird

Wilson's Phalarope

Cinnamon Teal, Yellow-headed Blackbird, and Savannah Sparrows were among the other birds present. Nice birdy stop before I headed back up the hill!  I actually took Titchenal Canyon Road up to Indian Camp Road and back down Badger Mountain. The one new bird for the year from that loop was a Red-eyed Vireo (180!). Not a completely unexpected find, but any time a code 4 bird comes along, it's a happy thing. It was singing its clear sweet 3 note runs from a riparian stretch in Titchenal Canyon before flying over the hills, giving me a look at the eye stripe, long body and bill, and bright olive coloring to help ensure it wasn't a Cassin's Vireo.

Willow Flycatcher

Douglas Creek

I zipped down to Douglas Creek, following a tip from Joe, the Douglas County compiler, that he'd had Red-naped Sapsucker and Gray Catbird there earlier in the morning. These were both two not-uncommon birds at code 2, but both had been missed as I criss-crossed Badger Mountain. Walking the nature path along the creek, I picked up one (Gray Catbird, 181), but not the other. To be completely honest though - the birds had my attention... nearly not at all. 

Dragonflies (like butterflies, mushrooms, berries..) could easily have been the big distraction in my life instead of birds. The four pictures here do not fully represent the experience that morning. Dragonflies were everywhere. Hundreds would be an easy call on the number. (Post-publishing edit! I was able to check with Dennis Paulson, the state (national? I'm not versed on these things, but it's possible) expert on dragonflies and damselflies. These are damselflies, and all the same species! Vivid Dancers - Argia vivida)

It's been fun to pick up on other parts of the ecosystems during times when the birds are light, or not attention-grabbingly uncommon. It was fun to try to even figure out why they clumped in different places... although I came up with nothing.

The picture I *didn't* get of this Yellow-bellied Marmot was of it gripping the top of the 
post in the picture. That's where it was perched when I first saw it!

Jameson Lake

White-throated Swifts, Rock Wrens, Ruddy Ducks, Coots, all the swallows you could want (you can't want Purple Martin though), a hot dog, a cold beer, and descriptions of what happened on Labor Day - that's what I got here. 

The Labor Day fires wiped out Jack's Resort here. The owners described how all of this happened, including the response from the Waterville volunteer fire department. . . including. . . helicopters coming to the lake and grabbing water to drop on other locations while the resort got no help. They fought it while they could at the resort, and got folks cleared away to safety, but when the wind turns in a wildfire, it moves fast. 

Have I seen effect of the fire in terms of the birds I've seen this year? Certainly. There are places where I likely would have been able to see Greater Sage Grouse, or Sharp-tailed Grouse that are going to need years to recover. Other birds (like the Sage Sparrow I saw on the East access Road as I left) may not be whittled down to 100s in the state, but certainly become harder to find when they lose that much habitat. 

Nothing to see here... please move along... nothing to see here folks

It has been one of the driest springs on record in this area. Combine that with the fires the previous year, and then combine that with some wind. I drove to all of the spots one might go to look for an American Avocet, and got nothing.

6th and N ponds 

Okay, I'm typing this a half-minute after learning about it, and this from a 3 minute skim. That's baking soda. Well... don't quote me on that and use it for soda bread, but if I read this right, this is an alkaline lake. Alkaline lakes have really high pH (low acidity, so they are basic... not in the pumpkin spice latte way), because of dissolved salts like the sodium bicarbonate that I will suspect we're seeing here. There's lots of invertebrates that really like these lakes, and there's lots of birds that like those invertebrates. 

But ya need water.

Some of these lakes are ephemeral - just here if there's enough rain and not too much evaporation. So the pond here that surprised me with Black-necked Stilt and Greater Yellowlegs in April, is no longer able to produce surprises until it gets a good rain. Fingers crossed. 

"Atkins Junior"

Atkins Lake is one of the best places in the state to photograph American Avocets in the breeding season. If it is there. It is not. It has been planted this year, and not with crops of invertebrates, apparently. So there's this little lake off to the side. I'm thinking people will be giving eBird reports from "Atkins Lake" when they really mean this one. I've been calling it "Atkins Junior" and I hope it sticks, if only for clarity. 

Do you see what this has? Water. Do you see what else? Mud. But what is it missing? Apparently invertebrates? Why? 

Baking soda.

It would be so tempting to just carry all that stuff from the previous pond, dump it in here, and wait for the crop of invertebrates to grow, followed by the succession crop of Avocets. It would be except science. I saw no bird in this water or on this mud. Why? Because birds don't eat water and mud.

So much dust...

Big Bend Wildlife Area

Just for fun, do a search on Google Maps for "Big Bend Wildlife Area Douglas County". Fun fact - it doesn't even show up. Awfully odd of me to have this I-can't-even-tell-you level of excitement about this place. How'd that happen? The interest here has been unfolding like an onion.

Goodness, I hardly know how to start here. Turkeys? I think I wanted to come up here because of turkeys. And I've had turkeys in this corner of the county. In fact just back in May! I came up to Turkey Corner (the only meaningful name I had for it) I drove. past. signs. that told me this was a wildlife area. I just thought... hm. Interesting. Even then, I'd never heard of this place by name. 

But I finished up with May and started to look into any birds I might be able to hunt down in June. Of course you've seen a lot of the ones I'd hoped to find. Red-eyed Vireo, however... I might be able to blame Red-eyed Vireo or Least Flycatcher. 

BirdWeb is a site that is run by the Seattle Audubon Society. They've got a lot of great information in there, including species accounts for birds that are found in the state. So Red-eyed Vireo, for example, has a species account, including a range map: 

Least Flycatcher has a similar breeding distribution, and Nashville Warbler may have been pretty similar. Other birds like American Redstart, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Northern Waterthrush come fairly close to the Douglas border, but not into it. But all of these spots are pretty close to the Columbia! I couldn't quite picture how I was going to be able to access those areas, based on a look at road maps.

Well, what about trail maps...?

I'd started poking around for hikes in the area, and ended up at www.alltrails.com. They have... all the trails. Like that trail from that weedy lot at the end of the cul de sac that actually takes you to the back side of the lake? You thought that only you knew about that trail?? Ha! It's on this site. So I popped in and found this: 

patched together using www.alltrails.com - it's not lined up perfectly... don't use this map

There's two thing that came from this: 1) There's a place called Big Bend Wildlife Area 2) There are trails going down to the Columbia.

!

From here I started looking into more species - owls! I had reasons to think that Barn, Short-eared, and maybe even Burrowing might have reasons to hang around here. So I started looking at camping options, which took me to dispersed camping which took me to the Bureau of Land Management, and an email, and finally a woman who informed me "dispersed camping is allowed here".

!!

I will stop here for now, as far as my research goes. IT WENT DEEPER, but some of that will be better to tackle in the next post. For now, it's all you need to know about why I decided to try to pull off my first successful backpacking in 30 years.

My first successful backpacking in 30 years

I had looked through the garage, and did a quick inventory of the things I needed in order to make it to a campsite, to camp and eat, to day hike, and come back alive. In the end, I was only three items short: 

1. a more compact sleeping bag
2. water purification tablets
3. bear spray

I know! The bear spray surprised me too. But I've come across a cougar once while birding, and that's plenty of times to do that without bear spray. Beyond this, you do not get to know how I packed. What clothes? What food? Nope. You've seen enough in this blog to know that this was not an REI approved product list. 

That said, in the end, I had what I needed, and was able to get it onto a ... 40? 50?? year old external frame backpack, and slung it on my back to head off for my campsite.

The trailhead

I had chosen the Northern access point from China Creek Road, and figured I would camp just short of Black Lake on the North side of the WLA. I passed some cows on the way - they are allowed to graze in selected areas. Much of the surrounding land is pasture land. Because this hike followed a stream path, there were plenty of Yellow-breasted Chats, Yellow Warblers, Bullock's Orioles, Western Wood Pewees, and Lazuli Buntings as well. 

I kept my ears open for any odd sounding warblers, and also for Common Nighthawk, which I did not yet have for the year. I have to say that the fact that I had looked into this so deeply paid off with a good sense of direction as I walked. Okay, sure, it was a straight shot between these hills and those cliffs, but there was still some comfort that came from the familiarity.

I got over a mile in, when I came across a little trouble.

Even now, I look at this gate, and think maybe there was a way to open it... but at the time, this became the end of my road. I'd still gotten into some of the habitat where I had wanted to sleep, so I walked it back a quarter mile to a good spot, and set up my tent. 

Just about the time I got set up, something large and black came lumbering down the path, and I was glad I had brought my bear spray. 

Now before I start getting ridiculed, in my defense, this... bull? (I think the definition here comes down to the presence or absence of horns (no) and genitalia (didn't look closely...)) was looking pretty disoriented, large, and was walking towards me. This was enough to get me armed and ready. As ridiculous as it seemed, it would have to be less ridiculous than the potential story: 

Man in critical condition following cattle attack.

It moved along, and I suddenly realized what a long day it had been. I slipped into my tent, closed my eyes, and got some amazing sleep.