October can be a tough time to add birds in a big year! Summer visitors are gone, migration is past its peak, and winter birds are often not back in for the year. Still, I entered the tail end of the year with 5 general groups of birds that I was looking for, with only a partial nod to taxonomy:
Life Birds
To be fair, only a Gyrfalcon would be a bird I'd not before in my life. I still think of Blue Jay and Sharp-tailed Grouse as life birds, since I haven't seen them in the state. Does a bird really count at all if it's seen outside of Washington?? Inconceivable.
Sparrows
Golden-crowned, Harris's, and White-throated Sparrows. All in the same genus of sparrows, even. I suppose Swamp is another outside possibility, but this was the right time of year to sift through a sparrow patch or two.
Ducks
Ducks were about all that I'd be anticipating and committing to try to find. Gulls. . . there are just so few places in Douglas where I've regularly sorted through large numbers of gulls, so they're not something I'd be looking for while gazing out at the water. Surf Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, and Long-tailed Duck are among the more likely ducks I might still hope to find for the year.
Winter Birds
More likely as the months go by: Bohemian Waxwing, Lapland Longspur, Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, and Common Redpoll would be the main remaining targets up on the Waterville Plateau in winter.
Tough Birds
Greater Sage-Grouse, Barred Owl, Barn Owl. These are birds that have all been seen in the county this year, and I have reason to believe that all three are living there year-round. They've just been tough. The grouse have been easier in years past when they had been visible at a lek near Leahy (a place I've found them once a few years back), but they're tough now. Barred has led to a lot of searching up on Badger Mountain, and a lot of finding other owls. One was seen (and may return?) along the water near East Wenatchee. Barn is out there, but I was having a hard time finding clear leads.
Union Hill Cider Company
With this in mind, I stayed the night of the 18th in East Wenatchee, and made my first stop in East East Wenatchee. Union Hill Cider Company had a few bottles I needed to pick up, so I swung by there first. I had apparently missed a pretty big event from the night before, although there were still some huge bins of apples out - a sale item from the event.
"Go ahead and grab some if you'd like." The owner encouraged me, so I got a Cosmic Crisp for the road. Apples were a theme for this trip. I had grabbed some Fujis during my September trip, but I'm going to say. . . September does not seem like the best time to get good apples. My October apples were amazing, starting with this Cosmic Crisp.
Rock Island Ponds
Hardly a surprise, I suppose! But I had sparrows to look for, so I started the day with a walk at Big Bow Lake. This one and Hideaway seemed to have very similar habitat and very similar species as well. On this particular day, it was most of the usual suspects, but there was additionally a Golden-crowned Sparrow (203 for the year) that popped up for a satisfying, if brief look.
Robins were the bird of the morning. Stacked up ten to a tree, and zooming in whenever any pishing happened. This happens in neighborhoods around home in the fall as well - piles and piles of American Robins, although usually with the occasional Varied Thrush mixed in.
There were tons of Wood Ducks on the pond, as well as a few Common Mergansers. A pair of Muscovy Ducks were on the pond and fairly unconcerned about my approach.
More apples
There's a fruit stand... you know the one where the highway briefly becomes "local traffic" just North of East Wenatchee? It's not quite a traffic circle, but a similarly inconvenient bend in the road to get folks to slow down. So the fruit stand *there* is the one I stopped at, of course. This is where my apple dreams were finally fulfilled.
They had clearly anticipated people like me. October is when all of the cool apple varieties come out of the woodworks, and I was able to find a box that was a nice mix of familiar (Cameo, Fuji, Pink Lady), vaguely familiar (Newton's Pippin), and whattheappleisthat (Arkansas Black). I even asked if they could pull out a Fuji and replace it with yet another variety in the whattheappleisthat category: a Spitzenburg.
The Spitzenburg was the first one I tried. Delicious. They're big apples, nice and balanced sweetness/tartness/crispness. I eventually made my way through all of them, forcing a few friends and family to "try this", and learned a couple things:
People aren't all that crazy about Cameos, but I like them. The happy things I listed above (sweet, tart, crisp) are the main things that people tend to look for in apples. Cameos might be missing the tart/sweet bit, but there's this other thing that draws me to them - flavor. It's a little subtle, but they do have a distinct flavor to them, and I unapologetically enjoy them.
Fujis are Fujis, and people like them.
Pink Ladies... are Cripps Pinks! Same apple, but "Pink Lady" is just kind of a marketing ploy. The ones I got leaned in a little harder on the tartness, and nobody seemed to mind much.
Newton's Pippin... I really need to try side by side with Granny Smith. My knowledge of green, tart apples is very thin.
Arkansas Black apples are related to Winesaps. That may not help you out at all, but for years, we had a Winesap tree in the yard. It was a little thing, and they were apples that might not do well in a store. But right off the tree, they are one of my favorite apples by far. I could taste some of that distinctive flavor for sure. The actual skin killed me. I believe the culprit is tannic acid, or "tannins" if we move to wine talk. They're very astringent, making you pucker. These skins made me pucker... too much to really enjoy the apple. Peeled - no problem (but goodbye, nutrients!).
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| A little background on at least two of the apples from goodharvestmarket.com |
Most importantly, they were a "life apple". Some of the same feelings that hit you when you see and hear a new bird for the first time are there when you bite into a new apple. The world gets a little bigger.
The best thing I did was to take *all* of these apples and throw them into some applesauce. Write this down somewhere, Dear Reader: "Douglas County. October. Apples. Applesauce". A post-it somewhere should serve as a good reminder.
A little time staring optimistically at the water
Heading up the Columbia a little ways, I made a few stops to peer out at the water. Scaup, Coots, and Wigeon - even a few loons and grebes had made their way back. One loon in particular put me on a growing list: People who saw a little white on the flanks of a bird and thought "Arctic Loon?" The saving grace for me, (assuming I'm salvageable) is the question mark. I know people see Loons, and that they sometimes flash a little white on the flanks, and that this happens. So I just asked the question, "Arctic Loon?" rather than "Arctic Loon!"
This bird was very much a Common Loon, at any rate, but it was a fun diversion.
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| A closer, clearer, Common Loon |
New Lines
My ex-wife and I made a trip many years ago now. Our first of many road trips. The aim was to see as many lighthouses as we could in a day. Great day. Kids, if you end up reading this someday, this is the trip where we picked up Whidbey, the reindeer that lives under the tree each Christmas. From the Greenbank general store. We took along a Washington State gazetteer (she folded it up so roughly... it pained me badly) and drew in the lines showing where we'd been. Simple act, but we kept doing it. That map got pretty well filled in, and it became a thing on a trip - "Are we going to get any new lines?"
This was a new line day for me.
I will meander through my thoughts on maps now and then. They mean a lot to me. The lines and angles and squiggles on the map showing the Western edge of the Waterville Plateau is important for the same reason that the words "Arkansas Black" are important... or a picture of a Gyrfalcon. They are representations of real things. Abstractions. But they represent things that are absolutely real. The road someone drives every morning... the tree someone grew from a sapling... they're real. Seeing a new bird, eating a new apple, driving a stretch of road, a part of the Earth I'd never visited - it blows my mind a bit. Maps get me out there. They inspire me anyway. Maps can't tell you where to go. They can only tell you where things are.
So, yeah, as I rose up to the Waterville Plateau once again, I took a left.
Weather may keep me from repeating this feat, so I'm so thankful for how short the bird list is now. I have some time to wander in places that might not be all that productive. It was quite lovely. My mind seemed to think that Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch was the most likely new bird I would come across. Nothing spectacular bird-wise, but following a road far enough to look down on the Columbia from a couple thousand feet up was spectacular.
So I've got a random question for you
This was the line of the day. For better or worse, I am comfortable with this as an opener. I asked at *least* a half dozen people about whether or not they knew of any barns that might have a Barn Owl. I don't even know how to capture all I learned from people through this.
- "Used to be one in there." he told me as he pointed at the collapsed barn.
- "It's awful, the land's not what it used to be. All of this monoculture, and the invasive plants... it's really hard to see."
- "We had one for about a week, and it moved along."
- "The falcons are the best. And the Ring-tails. There was a huge Ring-tailed Hawk here in the summer."
- "They're usually out on posts around first light. You'd hear them more than see them."
- "We had one a few years back, but my husband shot it."
- "You want to look in a barn that has some pine trees."
- "Sorry, I've been partying a little this morning," as he displayed the red solo cup.
And occasionally, I would come across the kinds of places I think people had been describing to me. Driving along, and there's a structure on the side of the road. No signs discouraging trespassers, nothing to steal. Park, and look very visible, binoculars out. "Hello!? Anyone here?!"
I went into none of these. That would have felt odd, and apparently this was a good call. Not all of these structures are as sturdy as they look... or perhaps they are exactly as sturdy as they look. Once I was happy to spy a large nest of sticks and grass up in the rafters. Empty, but a nice sign that owls are alive and well up on the plateau.
I may repeat this feat, but I might not. This felt like an honest try, and I really did love just getting to talk to people. Every person I met was not at all surprised by what I was doing, and genuinely seemed to want to help. But! no owl. wompwompwomp.
The most sincere patch of sagebrush
East of Mansfield, south of the highway, there's roads... wheat... giant piles of rocks... and patches of sage. Some of those patches are pretty big. This is where Greater Sage-Grouse had been seen a few times over the course of the year. I really had it in my head that I was going to park here, and walk a nice 6-8 mile "block", and undoubtedly see grouse along the way.
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| Rough-legged Hawk |
The hitch in that plan is that it's just not that continuous. I may have sentenced myself to mile-long stretches with no sagebrush. So I drove this "lap" twice, altering things a little on the second pass. Then I found it.
The way I figure it, a Greater Sage-Grouse would rise out of the sage patch it thinks is the most sincere. It had to pick this one. I couldn't see how a patch of sage could be more sincere than this one. I could look around and see not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye could see.
A lightly beaten trail led into the sage, and I really did need the walk, so I stepped a ways into it. It smelled wonderful. Horned Lark and Western Meadowlark... a herd of deer... but no sage grouse. Like the loon search, like the meander around the Western edge of the plateau, and like my barn owl interview series, this felt like an honest attempt to see these birds.
Right area, plenty of time spent, but that's the beauty of birds. Sometimes they ain't there. "Birds fly," my late friend Pete Fahey would have said. Or, if it was being delivered to someone who needed this explained to them, he may have explained it to them, "Birds fly..."
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| What the heck was this? Help me, Bug People! |
Speaking of the ephemeral nature of things
Websites seemed to say that the Waterville Historic Hotel was open. I called to inquire about vacancies, and got a message that clearly told me otherwise.
Whoops.
I weighed options, and decided that laying my head down at home didn't sound too bad. Driving to Waterville, I passed a barn, pulled over, got out of the car... and watched an owl come swooping out. !! Turned out to be a Great Horned Owl. Not what I was looking for, but a beautiful bird. It was the first I'd actually *seen* during the year, which is always nice.
