4/06/2024   Okanogan Highlands  (link to here)
Recent reports of a Great Gray Owl inspired us to revisit the Okanogan Highlands this weekend. Shep T and company apparently saw two along Davies Road in the meadow at the north of end of Teal Lake so we drove up there yesterday afternoon. We did not see any owls but the weather was unfavorable, foggy and snowing pretty hard, and we did not see many birds at all except at the farm by Teas Road L+.
We spent the night at the Junction Motel in Tonasket where you get ninety-dollar quality for $122. The carpet was shabby and the furnishings tired but the heat worked and you can't beat the location for birding the highlands. Someone else might not have noticed the unusually tall bed but I worried about it all through supper. Fortunately Darchelle managed the risky transfer from the wheelchair without incident.
We dedicated the day to a 90 mile loop M+ through the highlands. The fog had retreated to the mountain summits and fresh snow traced the landscape in white but made the higher elevation roads a messy mix of snow and mud. Davies Road, reaching 4500' near the old homestead (Vacation home?) at mile 3.5, is one of the highest and the snow looked dangerously deep in places but gave us little trouble. Our tires silenced by the snow, we crept quietly along Teal Lake peering into the dark woods and scanning the snowy meadows but did not find Shep's owls.
Somewhere along Davies Road we (actually Darchelle) did discover an owl but it was not one of Shep's. To our disappointment it was not even a Great Gray Owl, but a Great Horned, roosting in a big Douglas Fir well back from the road. I don't know how Darchelle managed to spot it.
Continuing down Davies Road we flushed a flock of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches in which Darchelle's photos revealed both Gray-crowned and Hepburn's races. The Rosy-Finches and a Rough-legged Hawk were the only winter highland specialties we came across all morning despite the wintry appearance of the landscape. We turned left on Fields Road then right on Mary Ann Creek Road L+, where we found half a dozen summer birds already among the year-round residents.
From Chesaw we decided to return to Tonasket via Wauconda so we could run up Bunch Road L+ to the height of land M+ where we had an American Three-toed Woodpecker two years ago. It was a rough run. Deep muddy ruts and potholes which might better described as sinkholes nearly convinced us turn around before we even reached the upper section of the road, which was littered with tree limbs and paved with frozen snow, but we made it. Up on top we played Three-toed Woodpecker calls and the bird flew in to perch high on a tall snag. Darchelle was heading out to scout around but was fortunately still close enough to the car to hear me call out to her and point out our tenth (out of twelve in the state) woodpecker of the year. I was grateful that Darchelle got a photo because the bird was sufficiently distant that I would not have been sure of the ID otherwise.
For a mile or two at its lower end, Bunch Road follows an ephemeral stream down through rolling meadows where warblers nest in the willows and Golden Eagles patrol for Ground Squirrels. The warblers won't show up for another month but Say's Phobes were already chasing gnats over a little sedge marsh while a nearby Northern Shrike rested up for the long trip north to its subarctic breeding grounds.
As varied as our sightings were today, none of the birds we saw were new for us for Okanogan County. For that we had to drive down to Omak where a pair of Wood Ducks had been reported on an oxbow slough on the south side of town L+. When we realized the slough could be seen well only from a gravel road along the top of a dike, we turned onto it. The two Wood Ducks were our third sighting this year and each time we've seen them, they have been a new county bird for us. They are spectacular but surprisingly easy to overlook unless you are looking for them.
We spent the night at the Omak Inn, an old favorite, and were not disappointed. Also not disappointing were the Chile Rellenos from the new Mexcan restaurant next door, El Torito Bar & Grill. They were among the best I've had anywhere in the state - nice and light with a perfect balance of cheese, chile and egg in a delicious sauce. I even posted a review about them.

4/07/2024   Okanogan  (link to here)
Last winter after several unsuccessful attempts we vowed not to devote any more daylight to searching for Ruffed Grouse, but winter is officially over and the grouse are drumming, making them much (for most people) easier to find. Not so much easier for me unfortunately; particularly from inside the car, I have a difficult time hearing low-pitched sounds. Today for example, up along Salmon Creek Rd L+ near Conconully I for the first time in my life actually watched a Ruffed Grouse drumming, and from a distance of about 80 feet I heard nothing at all. It was very cool to finally see it though. It had taken Darchelle about half an hour to track it down after she first heard it, and another ten minutes to position the car in precisely the right position to enable me to spot it. I would have given up but I'm grateful that she did not.
Among other treats along Salmon Creek Road were Black-capped Chickadees plucking fluff from last year's cattail heads and our first-of-year Red-naped Sapsuckers, then down the valley a few miles, a very large flock of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches.
We followed Salmon Creek Road into Okanogan, crossed US 97 and drove Cameron Lake Rd L+ to Brewster. Lots of ducks, few raptors and no finches. On our way home we sampled sagebrush stands in search of an early Brewer's Sparrow but were unable confirm any of the several candidates we called up.
On our way back to Seattle we learned that we had a visitor waiting for us at home. Our next-door neighbor had reported to Monica that she had seen a Starling fluttering against the inside of our attic window. The Starling had apparently gone to bed by the time we got home but the morning Darchelle looked for it again and found it. She was able to capture it in a towel and carried it outside to release it. Despite being trapped inside for almost 48 hours, it appeared to be okay. Perhaps it had been able to find a few spiders to snack on.

4/11/2024   ALS Clinic  (link to here)
The ALS Clinic today felt more like a social engagement event than a doctor visit. We met with four or five teams beginning at about 9AM, each including two or three people whose the faces were familiar but whose names I did not recall. They of course all remembered my name - it was written on the slip of paper tacked to the door - but to be fair, they seemed to remember me as well. I talked until my voice collapsed into a soft guttural growl like it does at home when I dictate too long on the computer. As we were talking together, the speech pathologist Michelle Scheff was evaluating my speech to determine my eligibility under Medicare for a speech generating device. I qualified, not only on the basis of my dysarthria and dysphonia but also by my ability to use the eye-gaze interface. I am optimistic that with practice I could spell out text at least as fast as I can with Dragon. The Tobii Dynavox I-16 + might even allow me to edit photos with Lightroom, though I will believe that when I can eye-gaze at it.
At my weigh-in when we arrived at the clinic, the scale read 184 lbs, 8 pounds higher than a year ago. My apparent weight gain piqued my curiosity so the next morning at home I reviewed my weight history from my clinic visits and had Darchelle weigh the wheelchair (45 + 2.5 for the foot rests) and ventilator (10.5 including the mask) along with my clothing (3). Doing the math, my current weight works out to approximately 123 pounds, about the same as it was five years ago and up about 10 pounds from my lowest readings about three years ago.
In other news we arranged to procure a Hoyer lift (free of charge) from the ALS Association and a backup ventilator (~$220/mo, no volume discount) from Performance Home Medical, thereby addressing two of my most pressing concerns regarding the relatively immediate future. The Hoyer lift might turn out to be portable, which would allow us to continue traveling even after we can no longer handle transfers. At some point the overhead of accommodating my disability may become prohibitive but meanwhile, we will continue to bird.

4/13/2024   Port Angeles  (link to here)
Since we did not have an overnight trip planned this weekend, we decided to chase the Northern Mockingbird recently reported behind a bank near downtown Port Angeles. It would be a new bird for Clallam County and only my sixth Mockingbird for the state in the past 12 years, assuming we could find it. The Mockingbird is a common roadside bird from New Mexico to Massachusetts so it is hard to get excited about it but to put it in perspective, I have seen just as many Gyrfalcons in Washington as I have Mockingbirds, though we have probably devoted more effort to finding the falcons. I would have had no reservations about driving out to the peninsula for a Gyrfalcon, but just for a Mockingbird?
It wouldn't have to be just for the Mockingbird though. The northbound shorebird migration is begining. A few Whimbrels have arrived at Dungeness Landing in Sequim and a Pacific Golden-Plover has been seen with the Black-bellied Plovers on Ediz Hook. Additional birds which we have never seen in Clallam County might also be possible, such as the California Scrub-Jay in Port Angeles and the Mountain Bluebirds in Sequim.
We did not catch the early ferry. We stayed up too late then took time to make coffee in the morning. In my opinion the 8:50 ferry with good coffee is preferable to the 6:30 without.
Darchelle found the bluebird and I found the Whimbrels, though it took two tries. On our way out we also picked up our new bird for Jefferson County, a Turkey Vulture. (One of our birding goals for the year is to add a new bird to our county lists for all 39 counties.) In Port Angeles L+ the Mockingbird was home, as was a pair of California Scrub-Jays. The only plovers on Ediz Hook were Black-bellied, though it took a while to figure that out. The pipits on Ediz Hook were a nice treat for Darchelle, who is partial to them.

4/20/2024   Klickitat County  (link to here)
Although it is sits mostly within Yakima County, Mount Adams is most prominent from southwestern Klickitat County. Seeking county birds we drove over to that area this afternoon from Lyle, meandering from oak woodland into grassland as we climbed up out of the Klickitat River Valley onto the open plateau west and south of Goldendale and about 25 miles southeast of the mountain. Although not as tall as Mount Rainier, Mount Adams is the largest by volume of Washington volcanoes. It began erupting about 500,000 years ago + and is still regarded as active though a major eruption is considered unlikely. It is at this point probably the least active of Washington's volcanoes with with the exception of the Goat Rocks + 20 miles to the north, a volcanic field which has probably been extinct since Mount Adams began to erupt.
The wheat fields in the foreground sit on top of flat-lying Columbia River basalts which also form the cliffs bordering the river west into Skamania County and beyond. Over the 15,000 millenia during which those basalts have been resting undisturbed in this area, Mount Adams could have arisen and eroded away again probably a dozen times. When viewed with the prospective of geologic time, a volcano is about as durable as a pimple. Now back to birding.
About three miles west of Lyle along Old Hwy 8, Major Creek Road L+ is a delightful dead-end dirt track which runs through open oak and pine woodland for about a mile and a half up the valley of Major Creek. Only half a mile east of Catherine Creek, it offers similar habitat which is both less crowded and more accessible for me. This morning, it also offered a mini-fallout of warblers. Flitting through the oak crowns were small groups of Yellow-rumped, Orange-crowned and Nashville Warblers. Thanks to the short stature of the oaks I was able to identify all three species with my naked eye.

4/21/2024   Skamania County  (link to here)
Mount Saint Helens, viewed here from a distance of about 15 miles, dominates the northwest corner of Skamania County. Volcanic activity began about 275,000 years ago + but the base of the current mountain was built in the past 30,000 years and the top 3500 feet of the pre-1980 peak in the past 4,000 years, making it the youngest and most active of the Washington volcanoes. Saint Helens maybe the leader but it is a competitive field. Glacier Peak + has produced very large eruptions within the past 15,000 years + and both Baker + and Rainier + are still hot after more than a million years after their first eruptions.
In the morning we'd added two new county birds at each of our two stops, Home Valley Park L+ and the Little White Salmon Fish Hatchery L+ but were still a couple species short of our goal of 120 for the county. The Wind River Road put us over the top. It did not however provide us a Spotted Owl, rumored to have been seen in that area last summer. Another prospective owl spot, the Girl Scout camp L+ behind Wind Mountain, had also been a bust. Skamania County supposedly still has a few owls but if so, we have yet to find them.

4/25/2024   Whitman County  (link to here)
Our primary objective for this overnight trip was a Ross's Goose reported for the previous few days at an ephemeral lake M+ about 4 miles southwest of the community of Ewan which is along WA Hwy 23 21 miles south of the town of Sprague. We arrived at the spot a day late and missed the goose but picked up more than a dozen other new county birds in the neighboring areas M+ of Whitman County before retiring to our room at the Sprague Motel. Comfortable, quiet, clean and well-lit, that room exceeded our expectations by a considerable margin, as had the birding over the previous several hours.

4/27/2024   Solitary Sandpiper  (link to here)
We spent almost as time today sitting in our kitchen debating whether or not to chase this bird as we did driving to Bainbridge Island and back to see it. The bird's location, a seasonal pond in a well-groomed park in a well-to-do wooded neighborhood, was only 22 miles from our driveway but thanks to a long ferry wait, the trip over there took us three hours. I didn't mind. I had already written off the afternoon and did not expect to see the bird anyhow so whatever happened would be fine.
The first thing that happened was that 90 minute ferry wait. Google navigation had not known about that. The second thing that happened was that my ventilator battery was just about dead. We had not known that, nor that the spare battery which we always keep in the car was also dead. Not until we were blocked into the ferry line did we realize that we had a problem. It wasn't actually much of a problem; we just kept the car idling the whole time with the ventilator plugged into the car charger. I was prepared to argue that it was a life or death situation for me if anyone complained about our disregard for the atmosphere, but nobody did.
After reviewing Google satellite maps of the bird's apparent reported location I had concluded that there was no wheelchair-accessible point from which I would be able to see it. I might have been right about that but while we were waiting for the ferry we received a new report which implied that our quarry was as of an hour earlier foraging right next to a paved jogging trail. We contacted Ed and Delia who had already been out on their own quest for a Solitary Sandpiper up near Port Townsend. They drove down to meet us and, arriving 15 minutes ahead of us, verified that our Solitary Sandpiper was still there.
We turned into the parking lot shortly after 6 PM under a heavy overcast with light drizzle in the air. The park was almost empty, as was the parking lot. We quickly located the jogging trail. It was empty too, with no joggers or dogwalkers in sight. Conveniently it was just wide enough for our Subaru. We did actually hesitate before starting down the trail, weighing the time it would take to load me into the chair and wheel me the 300 yards from the parking lot against the possibility that the bird during that time might decide either to go to bed or to resume its northbound migration.
Darchelle drove slowly enough to give any joggers or dogwalkers time to get out of our way but to no avail; we encountered no one. Stopping by the seasonal pond we surveyed its muddy margins but spotted only Mallards. Looking again I noticed a solitary sandpiper poking along the shore right alongside the car. It was of course the Solitary Sandpiper. Darchelle snapped a few photos out my window but when she got out of the car for a better view, a woman in a black raincoat was waiting for her.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded. I could not hear Darchelle's response but it did not mollify the woman in black, who repeated, "What did you think you were doing?" Darchelle began to explain but the woman did not wait for a response, explaining petulantly, "Now you are going to have to back up all the way back to where you started!" Darchelle got back into the car and turned it around before following the path back to the parking lot. When we met Ed and Delia they asked if we had seen the woman. She had accosted them too, asking them if they had seen us driving on the path and telling them that she was going to report us to the police. We did not wait around for the police to arrive. As far as we know, she did not wait for them either.

4/30/2024   In Conclusion  (link to here)
We conclude the month with 115,775 miles on the car, 249 birds for the year and 161 for the month, roughly keeping pace with the past two years. Our checklist count of 70 for the month was also comparable to the past two years. We drove 2646 miles and spent 11 days in the field with only 5 nights away from home.

5/05/2024   Whatcom County  (link to here)
As I noted when we saw one in Olympia last fall, Common Terns are no longer common in Washington, but one place they can reliably be seen is the harbor in Blaine in mid-May. Someone reported them there this morning so we drove up there this afternoon. Not just the terns but also the Short-billed Dowitchers reported on the mudflats would be new for the year if they stuck around until we arrived, which they did. We spent about an hour at the Blaine Marine Park L+ and adjacent marina. Conditions were not ideal - wind and rain - but fortunately I was able to see the birds without getting out of the car.

5/13/2024   Home  (link to here)