September 20 - Checking

 

September skies

September is such a lovely month. A person can wake up to the crisp reminder that the year is wrapping up. But the sun rushes in to wash away these concerns, bottling them up in beads of perspiration and letting them evaporate away in a lazy afternoon. "There's not much left to do," is a sentence filled with saudade; It's a very September sentence.

So most of what was left to do today was check. Harvest had been in full swing in Douglas for some time, as it had been with my bird harvest. But there was still fruit on the trees, and still some birds to be found. So it was time to check. But first, I needed to get my tire checked.

My September list of Les Schwab store sightings continued to grow...

How do you even start to characterize Les Schwab? They'll let you roll up any time with tire problems and fix them for free. Unless it's a Sunday. . . and they might not fix it. . . but those things you just accept, and the fact that you can have anything repaired on a car for free these days is just amazing. I dropped my car off at the East Wenatchee Les Schwab, hoping they'd fix it this time, and then set off on a walk. 

Checking for Scrub-Jays

Interesting now that I actually tried to map this out. All along, I thought I was on Rock Island Road, but the road turns into Highland Drive as it heads out of town. It started as a crisp morning as described, but it wasn't too long before the sun had me pulling off the sweatshirt, and tying it around my waist. I was on this little walk to look for California Scrub-Jays - a bird I'd been trying to find for a good few months now! But these birds do seem to become a bit noisier and visible in September, so I had a good feeling on this one. 

As it turns out, I got to the end of Highland Drive, and was briefly puzzled about where I was! I knew that Rock Island Road ran parallelish to the Columbia here, and I could see the Columbia off to my right. Trusting that Iowa would take me down, I took that right, and almost immediately heard a California Scrub-Jay (200!) as I descended. 

If I had a different phone. I mean all of this would be a little different with a different phone. I would have had my phone chirping at me to let me know what road I was on, and how long it would take me to get to my destination. I would likely have had some kind of zoom capability on the phone that would have produced a nice little picture of the Scrub-Jay. There are times where I've briefly second-guessed my choice to go off on these explorations far from home armed with a flip phone that does *almost* nothing besides allowing me to talk and text. 

But I've gained far too much from the disconnection. 

An absolute mess

My destination had actually been the a home belonging to a birder named Jerry in East Wenatchee. Jerry had reached out at one point to explain the ephemeral nature of lakes on the plateau, and more recently I had see him posting sightings of California Scrub-Jays in East Wenatchee, noting that these birds "are not uncommon in East Wenatchee." As I returned along Rock Island Road, I did happen along his home, and caught him out doing chores in the driveway. He offered to show me around his property. 

I had used the words above to describe Jerry's place at some point, and made sure (as humor sometimes misses) that he completely understood it as a compliment. I'd spent a good bit of the morning walking past finely manicured lawns, well-behaved gardens, and lazy monoliths of juniper bushes. None of the Standard American Lawn Flora enjoyed any such success in this carefully constructed jungle.

To be fair, there was a juniper tree. This was one of dozens of trees that Jerry pointed out as we walked, "It may be the tallest juniper tree in the state," he noted. I have to admit, seeing a juniper growing vertically was a surprise for me. 

Big Ol Juniper

The most fun for me is when I learn something and it actually sticks. This happened with pines for me here. Jerry pointed to a branch from a pine and asked me how many needles it had. 

. . . 

In my brain, of course I was thinking "dozens?", but I made a wild guess that he was asking something different. I looked in more closely and found that the needles were bunched in groups of five. If I've correctly understood things I've read since, these are "white pines", a taxonomic group that has had some struggles in the state in recent times. Blister rust and bark beetles have put this once widespread tree into decline. 

The next pine I saw looked more familiar. 

Admittedly tough to see, but these needles are in bunches of three.

Three-needle bunches are found on yellow pines, or in this specific case, a Ponderosa Pine. 

Jerry was particularly excited then to show me this one:

Pinyon Pine

The "bunches" here were nothing more than single needles, making this a Pinyon Pine. My brain casually noted that there is a bird called a Pinyon Jay that's not found up in our neck of the woods. Jerry confirmed that this is more of a California tree. A search on eBird got me this for Pinyon Jay:

Which makes reason number 8 (or so) for me to make Klickitat County my stop next year. We shall see. Please understand that the simple fact that I'm not going to see a Pinyon Jay in Klickitat County in my life would have no bearing on this decision. Even seeing the border (something I've not seen in any of my big years) tickles a part of my brain in a "Here Be Dragons" kind of way.

A very uncountable Barrow's Goldeneye

We passed through a couple gates along the way, and under an arch of hop vines, back to the far end of their property, where Jerry had arranged a bit of a détente with some poison ivy. It was just an amazing bit of work. How fun to have a place that seemed so chaotic, and yet was designed and known plant by plant. I just feel so fortunate to have had a chance to get this tour. I added zero birds during this time, but outcomes like this are exactly why I love doing these years.

On my way out, I asked if he ever gets any owls, and learned that he has had Long-eared and Barn (!!), which is an owl that I have not yet found for the year. 

Checking out

I got a ride back to Les Schwab from Jerry, and found that they had fixed the problem - a bad valve stem. As always seemed to be the case at Les Schwab, there was no charge for the repair, and I was pretty happy to have four safe tires once more. 

I swung down to the East Wenatchee waterfront, trying a couple different spots along the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail. With reports of Sabine's Gulls recently on the other side of the Columbia, I figured it was a good time of year to be staring out at the water and giving gulls the once over. Sparrows got the same treatment as I walked, but nothing out of the ordinary came up. 

Wenatchee, to be fair, has the Wenatchee River spilling out into the Columbia, so the gulls tend to concentrate on that side of the river, while any that wander over to the Douglas side tend to be a little more widely dispersed. I use explanations like this when I have to read texts telling me that a Parasitic Jaeger was seen flying from the Chelan side of the river to the Douglas side right around the time I was out looking. 

It softens the blow a little. 

I made a few stops along the Columbia, going up as far as Lone Pine to get a cup of coffee and some bags of fruit (apples and pears this time). Then it was up to the plateau. 

Waterville

I should explain that I had my camera with me as I walked along the Columbia. I just didn't have the memory card in it. I realized this late into my walk and just relied on whatever pictures Flippy could give me. In East Wenatchee, I really *feel* like I retrieved the memory card from my laptop and pocketed it. My pockets, however, did not have the card when I rolled into the Waterville STP. I looked around a little, but found nothing. 

Fortunately (?) at the Waterville STP, I also looked around a little, but found nothing. Black-bellied Plovers were the birds seen between my last visit and now, but the water levels had gotten lower, and the sandpipers of August were now replaced by a few dozen American Pipits. Northern Shovelers, and a few teals (Cinnamon? Blue-winged?) wearing their off-brand fall plumage swam in the west pond. 

Badger Mountain

Here, as with most of my stops for the day, I did not come in with a long list of birds I was looking for. Just checking. In this case, there was a weeks-old report of Red-naped Sapsuckers. This was a bird I expected earlier in the year, but I just never came across them. On this particular day, it was quiet as I walked Q Road. 

Honestly, I didn't mind it. I had promised to get up on Badger Mountain and look for Broad-winged Hawks flying overhead. While this was mostly in jest, I did spend some time staring up at the clouds. I did also have a single Sharp-shinned Hawk move through the area, moving tree to tree three or four times on a pretty direct path from North to South. I didn't have a chance to ask if it was migrating, but that's my suspicion. 

Checking in for the night

Douglas Creek is a spot that I knew I wanted to come back to this year. My fondest memory prior to this year centered around a September camping trip from a few years back. I drove from Badger Mountain to Douglas Creek - getting lost exactly one as per usual - drove through the massive puddle and into "my" campsite.

I know it's not my campsite. But every time I roll in here, it's available, and it's got many fond memories associated with it now. The first thing I noticed on arrival is that the apples were ripe. Well. . . ripe"ish". I'd munched on some a few years earlier. This time around, some had fallen to the ground, some fell periodically during my stay, and most of those needed a little more time.

The ground was not exactly littered with apples, however, which puzzled me a little. Then the cows came. 

I have gotten almost comfortable being around cows this year. I respect that they are pretty large animals. I respect that bulls can be aggressive. So I don't know that "comfort" best describes my state as they move into the campground, but I can at least register that they are there for the apples, and carry on with setting up camp. 

The evening was pretty unremarkable otherwise. I warmed up some soup over a stove, and burned some of the apple wood lying around the site. A Red-naped Sapsucker (bird 201 for the year) called at one point from across the creek, leading me to head off on a little walk. I got a couple calls before it stopped for the evening, with no visual. 

Good night

(sleep...)

I was woken up by a few different things. The first and most pressing issue was the large animal outside of my tent. 

I was pretty sure it was a bear. ("But Tim... you were also pretty sure that one bird was a Bushtit...") I'm going to blame some of that on the normal disorientation one feels when waking up. I think camping naturally lends itself to stepping through these worse case scenarios. 

So I just stopped breathing for a half hour or so, and listened with my eyes wide. This bear was really not moving around much. It seemed pretty content to just shift its weight periodically. In my head, I tried to picture what was going on outside my tent. What do bears do that involves staying in one spot for long stretches of time. I briefly imagined it sitting down to knit a sweater (again, bear with me, so to speak, I was half asleep/half awake), but decided that I would have heard the click clack of the crochet hooks. 

The "Moo" gave it away.

(sleep...)

Western Screech-Owls tooted outside the tent for a little while, replaced by silence, occasionally interrupted by the fall of an apple. Later still, it was Common Poorwills.

(sleep...)

There was a car outside of my tent. I woke to see the south side of my tent bathed in light. For the life of me I could not figure out how a car had made its way into the campground without me hearing it, but that was clearly what had happened. 

As I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, trying to think of exactly how to greet the visitors to the campground, I slowly realized what it was. Despite the cold air around me, I got dressed and stepped out of the tent. 

Douglas Creek cuts through the land here, creating a pretty deep and narrow canyon? valley? through the land. If you're lucky enough with your timing, the full moon can put on quite a show as it slides through the Southern window of this setting. Orion and the Pleiades were in full view as well. 

I reached back in my tent for my sleeping bag, walked across the moonlit campground to my car, hopped in the driver's seat and hit the ignition. It didn't take too too long to get the temperature up from 45 degrees to something comfortable, and I turned the car back off. I figured from here, my ears would have less to feed to my imagination, and my eyes would have more to work with in getting me back to reality should I wake up again. 

(sleep...)