4/02/2025   Indigo Bunting  (link to here)
One of my favorite birds was reported in Issaquah a week ago. The Indigo Bunting is a gorgeous blue songbird which breeds across the eastern half of the country from Kansas to Maine. I first got to know it in New Hampshire during my first summer of birding 50 years ago, when I discovered through my casual observations that each individual in my rural neighborhood sang its own unique song. Using their songs I was able to determine the range of their summer wanderings (up to 0.7 miles) and that they returned to the same territories in successive summers. I regret now that I did not conduct a more rigorous study but I was not then and have never been since, a scientist at heart. I lack the discipline for research but I have since high school been fascinated by many aspects of the natural world, particularly flowers, birds and rocks - things with color that are large enough to see with the naked eye, like Indigo Buntings.
Anyhow the buntings winter mostly in Central America (some in Cuba and south Florida) from October to late April so if the Issaquah bird, a male mostly molted into breeding plumage, is a northbound migrant it is both far off course and abnormally early. Alternatively it might have overwintered at a feeder nearby. Eastern warblers, also neotropical migrants like the bunting but even less inclined to subsist on seeds, have been known to do that. Indigo Buntings are very rare in Washington but every two or three years one turns up in early summer, claims a territory and sings tirelessly to attract a mate. As far as I know none have succeeded though the bird over at Wenas Creek in 2017 was rumored to have paired up with a closely related Lazuli Bunting. Hybrids occur, and in my limited experience are never quite as beautiful as their parents.
Initially suspecting that the bird had been misidentified and subsequently concerned that it might be inaccessible, we weren't tempted to chase it but as more details emerged we yielded and made the 23 minute drive. Darchelle having done her research recognized the owner when he happened to come out to walk his dog just as we happened to pull up to his house. He was friendly and helpful, even inviting us to wheel around behind the house to watch for the bird. His feeder had fallen down and he had not seen the bird all morning but he offered to put out seed on his deck railings to improve our chances. Reluctant to go to the trouble of getting out of the car, I suggested that we try watching from the cul-de-sac around the corner L+, from which others had reported decent, though distant, views of the bird. That worked. After monitoring the deck railings for a half hour (Darchelle with binoculars and I through my opera glasses), we both spotted the very blue bird land on the railing.
We left a thank you note and a ten dollar donation for seed by the front door on our way out.
Being so close we stopped by Lake Sammamish State Park L+ on our way home and found our customary first-of-year Red-breasted Sapsucker.

4/5/2025   Walla Walla  (link to here)
Richard had a high school reunion in Vancouver but Donna didn't want to make the long drive and Sally was heading out of town with Ben and the kids, so we got up uncharacteristically early this morning and drove over to Walla Walla to keep Donna company. Of course there was some birding involved too, particularly on Durr Road L+ outside of Ellensburg where we hoped that the shrub-steppe birds which we missed a week ago in the wind and rain might be more active in the morning sunshine. They were, and we picked up the three sagebrush species we hadn't yet seen this year.
We also found a White-hroated Swift and a Cliff Swallow at the Selah Rest Area L+, both new and both summer nesters in the impressive cliffs below the overlook. On our way through Pasco Darchelle spotted a sixth new bird, the first Western Kingbird of the year not just for us but for the entire state. She had only a brief glimpse as it alighted on a sign above the freeway but a flycatcher with a gray back and bright yellow belly can't be much else. Our report was approved despite being two days earlier than the previous earliest arrival.
We had a pleasant visit. Darchelle watched church wih Donna while I fixed a few broken pages on the website, then after lunch I think we all took naps.

4/6/2025   Lyle  (link to here)
We didn't leave Walla Walla until after lunch. Richard ran or mostly walked the first Sunday of the month 2-mile time trial down at the track, averaging a respectable-for-his-age 16 minutes per mile. The rest of us stayed in bed until he got home then we all ate breakfast together. I squeezed in a little more eye-gaze time while Darchelle packed up and Richard napped.
In Wallula we stopped at the Whitetail Bay overlook L+ and found our first Caspian Terns of the year. They've been around for two weeks now but we've missed them on our prior somewhat casual attempts. This afternoon Darchelle caught the male in the act of offering his (prospective?) mate a small fish, a behavior I've also seen in Black and perhaps Common Terns. It's a Tern family tradition apparently.
Passing through Lyle we scored an Acorn Woodpecker for the year thanks to Maxine who'd reported three at the Syncline Winery on Balch Road L+ a day or two earlier. They were still there. We did not see any Lewis's Woodpeckers. An hour earlier I'd seen one along Hwy 14 some 50 miles to the east but we had not stopped to confirm my ID because I was sure we'd find them in Lyle.
Sally, barely, had talked us into joining them for the night at the Government Mineral Springs Guard Station + back in the damp woods north of Carson. Darchelle has had a sore back for several days now so I've been very anxious about transfers, to the point that I've been trying to avoid using the toilet which in turn means minimizing food intake, which Darchelle doesn't like because she worries about my weight getting too low. Anyhow Sally assured us that she and Ben would be happy to help with transfers, and I liked the idea of visiting Ridgefield on the way home tomorrow. We would be going there soon one way or another and it's a shorter drive from Carson than from Seattle.
My anxiety persisted through the evening and even after Darchelle and Sally got me safely settled into bed. I must have found something else to worry about but we were in bed long enough that I eventually got some sleep. In the morning Gracie, I think, made pancakes but we didn't stick around long enough to enjoy them, leaving instead just in time to find a cell signal near Carson and send a message for Sally before her 9 AM deadline.

4/7/2025   Ridgefield  (link to here)
The one bird we really wanted to see at Ridgefield NWR L+ was an American Bittern. We've seen at least one every year for the past decade but fewer in recent years since I've been in the wheelchair so we don't take it for granted. Ridgefield is not the only place in the state to see one from the car, but it unquestionably the easiest. Not for me today though.
Most of the Bittern habitat along the Ridgefield loop drive is on the driver's side of the car, and so were both of the Bitterns that we, that is Darchelle, spotted. Darchelle was not able to maneuver the car into a position from which I could see the first bird so we drove around again and found a different individual, which I saw.
We also had good views of pairs of Cinnamon Teal, a striking bird albeit in my opinion not as attractive as its North American cousins. Blue-winged Teal are simply elegant and Green-wings are cute in their own earnest way whereas the bill on the Cinnamon is too large and the red eye gives the drake a perpetually startled expression.

4/10/2025   Mountain Quail  (link to here)
Like most of the other North American members of its family the Mountain Quail is a very good-looking bird, which makes it all the more disappointing that despite hearing them for the past four years in a row we haven't actually seen one since 2018. We used to see them annually at the Port Orchard Airport Quarry + but that location required a hike, and moreover the birds have not been reported there since 2022. At our alternate location, the 144 St PowerLine + northwest of Gig Harbor, I've been able to hear them from the car but they've always stayed out of sight. Until today.
Like the Northern Bobwhite, Mountain Quail are not native to western Washington but unlike the Bobwhite, they are widespread in Oregon right up to the south bank of the Columbia River. They evidently refuse to cross the water so in Washington they are native (though rare) only around the northern and eastern edges of the Blue Mountains where the river is not an obstacle. Perhaps this summer we'll try to find them over there.
Knowing that the quail are early risers, we tried to do likewise but seduced by an ultimately rather mediocre movie, we stayed up too late and didn't get to 144th Street NW L+ until almost 8 AM. Once on site we were birding our way up the road from 118th NW, reluctant to start really looking for the bird in case we'd have to acknowledge that we weren't going to get it, when we both heard two distant calls. The quail has a distinctive "qwierk" call which is not easily mistaken for any other local bird so we were confident of the ID and relieved to dodge being skunked. That's the problem with birding the way we do, chasing individual species; it's hard to relax and enjoy being out in nature until you get the bird. Once you do though, it's great.
We hailed Ed and Delia, who'd just returned to their car about a quarter mile up the road at the gate after an unsuccessful quest for the quail. Soon after they joined us they too heard the distant "qwierk"s. In years past we've mostly heard the birds beyond the gate where Ed and Delia had been searching but these calls were coming from off to our left, south of the powerline road in an area which appeared to be forested. Although I think of Mountain Quail as birds of chapparal, their primary requirement is dense brush, preferably with some tree cover along with small clearings. In western Washington they seem to favor Scotch Broom; their range corresponds well to those areas in the southern Puget Sound region where Scotch Broom is the dominant pioneer shrub in clearcuts. The satellite map M+ reveals that 144th Street NW fits that description, and that the quail we were hearing was probably calling from a plantation of young conifers just out of sight down a grassy double-track.
We followed the double-track through the brushy strip of woods along the powerline to a closed tube gate, parked there and listened. The calls were definitely closer now, not far off to our left along the edge of the young cedar plantation beyond the gate. With everyone's consent Darchelle played a few "qwierk" calls on her phone and suddenly the bird darted into view behind the gate. I didn't see it until it had retreated into the brush on our left, hopped up onto a mossy fallen limb and resumed calling, but at least I saw it, and both Darchelle and Ed got photos.

4/12/2025   Home  (link to here)
All three of the above species have established breeding territories which include our back yard with its feeders and source of water, but the leucistic chickadee appears to be an unattached male and the female junco appears to have an injured leg. I don't yet know if she is the female of our breeding pair, whose nest may again be located in the brushy median strip in front of the house.

4/19/2025   Solitary Sandpiper  (link to here)
While not rare in Washington during migration, the Solitary Sandpiper is in my opinion not an easy bird to find. They don't flock to coastal mudflats and beaches but, as their name implies, tend to appear alone in their preferred habitat of quiet and often secluded puddles and small ponds and most of them, despite breeding from Labrador to Alaska, migrate east of the Rockies. We've seen at least one every year for the past decade but our first sighting, typically during the last ten days of April, has always required a dedicated outing and sometimes more than one. Or, as will be the case this year, more than two. It gets us out of the house.
Yesterday we chased a bird reported at the Evans Creek Trail L+ in Redmond, a new location for us. We missed the bird but liked the trail. It is paved and runs through fields, marshes and patches of riparian forest along the semi-rural south side of town. Today was a warm spring day and along the way trees were leafing out, bushes were flowering, birds were singing and ducks were paddling around pools of open water in the marsh. The two Greater Yellowlegs which had accompanied the Solitary Sandpiper several hours earlier were still foraging in the mud between the clumps of rushes and marsh grass, but the shorebird with them was not the Solitary Sandpiper but rather a third Greater Yellowlegs. We double-checked. On the other hand, several American Pipits were also foraging in the marsh so we did not leave empty-handed (or empty-listed?).
Today the elusive Solitary Sandpiper, or more likely another one, turned up at Homeacres Road L+ in Everett, the site of our first of year Solitary Sandpiper sighting in 2022. On that visit, with Ed and Delia, we had good views of the bird. Today we had no views of the Solitary Sandpiper but we did see our first Common Yellowthroat of the year, four weeks to the day later than our first sighting of that species in 2022.

4/22/2025   Appointment  (link to here)
The 22'nd of April has been on the calendar for a couple of months now, it being the date of the medical appointment for which Darchelle's folks would drive over from Walla Walla and stay with us. She would accompany them to the appointment in downtown Seattle so I would be on my own for several hours. We still consider that to be an acceptable risk; the worst that could happen would be that my head might slip out of position preventing me from using the eye-gaze device but in that case I could ask Siri to play an audiobook on my phone, or make a call if necessary. Or I might have to pee too badly to hold it in which case Darchelle would have to wash my wheelchair seat cushion when she returned. Or the ventilator or its hoses might malfunction in which case I would suffocate within ten minutes or so and the party would be over.
That last scenario hasn't happened yet.

4/24/2025   Solitary Sandpiper  (link to here)
Today on our second visit to Homeacres Road L+ and our third attempt for the species, we finally caught up to a Solitary Sandpiper. We caught up with Mike and Maxine too, who drove up while we were savoring our success and whose earlier report inspired our effort this morning. I don't know why they, having already seen the bird, returned to the scene; perhaps they just wanted to see if anyone had noticed their report. I'm guessing that they weren't surprised to see us. In any case we had a nice chat, about the sandpiper of course, but also about other birds and our recent and not so recent outings to look for them.

4/27/2025   Kittitas  (link to here)
For me the appeal of another trip to Kittitas County was limited but I could be motivated by the prospect of a stop at the railroad ponds L+ in Cle Elum to try for a couple eastside year birds. We drove over there this afternoon noting the foot-thick layered snowpack lingering only right at the summit of the pass and the stop-and-go traffic jam extending west from exit 80 for more than 10 miles. Note (again) to self: don't drive home Sunday afternoon.
When we reached Cle Elum the sun was shining and the air was an almost comfortable 62F but a vigorous breeze was sweeping down the valley. It was the kind of breeze that small birds generally don't like and we didn't find many, except in the lee of a tangle of tall bushes near the east end of the brushy area. That's where we watched the Rufous Hummingbird filling up on Oregon Grape nectar and briefly spotted our first Nashville Warbler of the year. We drove farther up the valley about a mile and a half to an Aspen grove which harbored, as I had hoped, a pair of Red-naped Sapsuckers. That was my target bird for the day.

4/30/2025   Home  (link to here)
Here it is the end of April already. The tulips are wilting and the last few Magnolia flowers have fallen apart but the Aztec Pearl and the Apple tree are in full flower and out front the Lithodora is a deeper blue than the sky over Seattle on a summer day (before fire season). Although it doesn't feel as though we did much birding, we spent all or part of eight days in the field, submitted 43 complete checklists and saw or heard 127 species for the month. For the year we added 29 species to conclude April with 252 species (Brian 251), two ahead of last year and twenty two behind 2022. We spent only two nights away from home and put only 1638 miles on the car.

5/01/2025   Home  (link to here)
Sitting this morning in front of the French doors overlooking the back yard, Darchelle and I wrote an entry in our gratitude journal. Our previous entry was back in December; apparently we misplaced the journal at the end of 2024 and only just now rediscovered it.
Darchelle wrote this morning that she was grateful for her beloved husband, for the beauty and renewed life of spring, for help with the garden and for a car with good shock absorbers. She elaborated but I don't recall the details.
I was grateful for my loving wife, for a good night's sleep and for the beauty of our back yard. In the back yard a lanky willow presides over a semicircle of disorderly green shrubs and forbs arrayed around a small patio of seed-speckled flagstones. Back by the fence and partly hidden behind the spring-green foliage of the Vine Maple, our Aztec Pearl bush is bursting with showy white flowers. Closer at hand sprays of sky blue Forget-Me-Nots catch the sunlight as they cascade down over the low stone wall bordering the flagstones. In the dappled sunlight filtering down through the dark green Douglas Firs beyond the fence, our back yard mix of foliage and flowers truly is beautiful, as inspiring as any wild patch we might have found had we ventured out this morning.
We may not have completed any gratitude journal entries in the past four months but since the beginning of the year we've submitted 18 eBird checklists for the back yard with a total of 39 species of birds. And FWIW, seven species of mammals: Gray Squirrel, Norway Rat, Eastern Cottontail, Raccoon, Domestic Cat, Human Being and Domestic Dog. The dog was heard-only but that counts. We submitted our 19th back yard checklist L+ this morning with 13 species, including our first of year fledged baby Song Sparrow, which we initially mis-identified as a junco. The young bird did not appear to be accompanied by an adult but when one of the adult Song Sparrows popped out onto the patio the young bird hopped up to it to ask for food. As if surprised, the adult momentarily touched beaks with it before heading over to the pond, the young one trailing along behind. They apparently sorted it out over there because the young bird returned to scrounge around for spilled seed on the flagstones while the adult went off about its pond business. The encounter felt more noteworthy when we believed the young bird to be a junco.
We still call it a pond but our former water feature has become so choked with fallen leaves and Magnolia petals that the birds scamper across the surface like Jesus, though the Siskins still seem to find a little open water around the edges in which to bathe. They flutter up to a twig of the overhanging Wax Myrtle afterwards and alternately preen and furiously flap their little wings, then drop down to the water to do it all again. Perhaps if we cleaned out the pond they could make do with just one bath but maybe like us, they don't bathe every day so they have to be thorough about it when they do.

5/06/2025   Kitsap  (link to here)
We haven't been out birding for more than a week though we've been doing a back yard list L+ over coffee (PCC Light mostly) and breakfast (kefir for me and oatmeal for D) every morning. With our recirculating stream still out of commission we're lucky to get a dozen species this time of year, even as millions of migrants are flocking into and through the state. That stream of migrants hasn't produced much to pique our interest. Our priority right now is to pick up species which we'll have difficulty getting for the year in the state, and of the several of those which have been reported in the past week (Manx Shearwater, Broad-winged Hawk, White-faced Ibis), only the Ibis across the Sound at a marsh in Kingston promised much chance of success. So we chased it today.
Reports indicated that the bird spent much of the time hidden in tall grass and even when it did appear could only be viewed at a distance from a busy road, so our chances were not great and our optimism probably unwarranted as we set out for the ferry, but I had another objective in mind. Three weeks ago I placed an order for two hard-to-find Imperial Stouts (Even More Jesus (12) and Proper Pour Cabernet Cask (4)) at the Marina Market in Poulsbo and, figuring that we'd shortly be heading back over to the Peninsula, specified in-store pickup since the store is only 15 minutes out of our way and the cost to ship the beer east across the Sound to us would be about the same as the ferry ticket to ship ourselves west the Sound to pick up the beer. A few days ago, having not returned to the Peninsula as I'd anticipated, I almost called the store to request that they ship the order despite the cost. I didn't make the call, and the next day the Ibis turned up.
The afternoon was sunny with variable high clouds and very little wind to ruffle the flat surface of the Sound. Not many birds out there either but that's pretty typical. As always, we requested special treatment to park on the starboard side of the boat, and as usual, the ferry ticket person cheerfully obliged us. It felt like a summer trip; even on the water the temperature was in the mid-60's and a mile or so inland it was close to 80.
The Ibis marsh L+ was easy to find but too distant to scan effectively without optics so I sat in the car while Darchelle scoped. I was able to pick out the ducks as she called them out but I couldn't resolve the shorebirds other than a rare Wilson's Phalarope, which I was only able to pick out when Darchelle held binoculars up to my eyes after 20 minutes of maneuvering first the car, then my torso and finally my head into position. Not only a year bird for us but also rare in Kitsap county, it almost made up for missing the Ibis.
Later that evening Darchelle asked me if there was any part of the day I enjoyed. Beset by the vague depression which often afflicts me late in the evening, I was unable to answer in the affirmative but I did in fact enjoy picking out the bird songs through the open windows as I sat in the car, and was gratified to finally spot the pale dot that was the phalarope, and felt relief at the sight of her emerging from Marina Market with my beer. At first the guy at the counter had told her he had no record of my order. After she showed him the email stating that it was ready for pick up, he disappeared into the back of the store and returned empty-handed stating "I've looked everywhere it should be". Darchelle replied "Could you just check in the places where it shouldn't be?", and a minute later the clerk came out with the goods.
We made it home with just enough light left in the sky or us to see the Iris blooming along the driveway and the blue Columbine and orange Poppies flowering together in the front yard.

5/08/2025   Ewan  (link to here)
Our year list, the list of birds we've seen or heard in Washington in 2025, stands at 254 as of today. I'd like to get to 300 before the first of June, a goal which should be well within reach given the birds which are either already in the state or soon will be. Early this morning when I couldn't go back to sleep I tallied 57 species which we could potentially get before the end of the month. Last year during the same time period we added 53 species.
With the trips we're considering over the next three weeks we should be able to find most of the 57 I'm looking for this year. At the end of the month we plan to repeat last year's trip across the northeastern highlands and river valleys from Okanogan to Spokane during which we picked up about a dozen species. Next week we're planning a one day blitz trough the shrub-steppe, Ponderosa Pine and mixed coniferous forest habitats of Yakima county, then over White Pass and out to the coast with stops in the westside forest along the way. The following week we'll pay a quick visit to Walla Walla County and the Blues. Those two trips together last year gave us 40 species. This morning we are heading most of the way across the state to the hamlet of Ewan in the scablands and Palouse hills south of Sprague and if things go according to plan, we'll have time for a couple of stops in the central Columbia Basin on our way home. As we like to say as we kick off the day, "Today is the first day of the rest of our month." Actually we never say that; I must not have had enough sleep last night.

5/09/2025   Wenas  (link to here)
For a birdwatcher, or at least for these two birdwatchers, it is difficult to spend the night in Ellensburg without also spending the next morning on the North Wenas Road L+. Finding ourselves at the Naches end of that road at lunchtime, we hopped over the hill for omelettes (delicious) and coffee (not so much) from the Sticky Fingers Café +, and once in Naches it was difficult (more so for Darchelle than for me, this time) not to run up Hwy 12 and check some of our favorite birding spots. Unfortunately a destructive fire last summer burned much of the mature pine-oak woodlands in the lower 10 miles of the valley. The beauty and species diversity of that stretch of habitat will not be fully restored in my lifetime (duh!) or in my children's lifetimes, or even my grandchildren's, and that's if there are no additional severe fires (a big if) and that I eventually have grandchildren (a somewhat smaller if).

5/10/2025   Tattler  (link to here)
The Wandering Tattler reported regularly over the past week under the condos at Cormorant Cove near Alki Point was apparently there last year as well though I don't remember hearing about it. It's an athletic and somewhat shy shorebird which favors rocky shorelines (such as jetties) as it passes through the state during migration, though it tends to stay on the outer coast. Having never seen it in King County we drove over there this afternoon and diligently searched the waterfront (Darchelle) or patiently sat in the car watching pedestrians (Brian), but neither of us found the bird. Actually we each might have heard it and Darchelle probably saw it but when she managed to get a better look and a photo, her bird turned into a Spotted Sandpiper. That was weird because she was pretty sure her first bird was the Tattler and nobody else had spotted the Spotted but her photo was unambiguous. Meanwhile I spotted several good-looking runners, most of them female. That was bittersweet because that street was on the route of the very first run Darchelle and I did together twelve years ago, and we can't do that together any longer.
In the evening I was more depressed, or maybe sad, than usual. I couldn't really say why but it probably had more to do with missing running with Darchelle than with missing the Tattler.

5/12/2025   Tattler  (link to here)
When the Tattler was reported again yesterday we tried again as soon as we could, which was this morning after Liz and her friends Peter and Kate left. My friendship with Liz, the sister of my college friend David N, dates back to 1979 when, among other adventures, we hiked up Pike's Peak while a tornado touched down in the town of Manitou Springs 6 miles east and 6,000 feet below us. It wasn't a big one. It tore up a few shade trees and trashed a gas station but it was the only one I've ever seen and all I saw was the top of it; I didn't get to see the funnel. It's a life regret, not ever seeing a real funnel cloud, but a fairly minor one. My friendship with Liz (or Beda, as David and I know her), is not one of my life regrets. As is the case with all of my long term friendships, although she and I have been variably close over the years she has been there for me at a couple of important times in my life and I will always be grateful for her love and kindness.
Heading home from a road trip out to the Olympic coast, they spent the night with us and left shortly after breakfast. We left shortly after that and found the Tattler easily, foraging among the pilings under the condo building, as advertised. I couldn't see it from the car so Darchelle wheeled me down to a viewpoint where I sat in the sun and visited with a birder named Andy N while Darchelle got photos.
Pressing our luck we drove up to Everett where Maxine had rediscovered the Least Flycatcher in the same little patch of trees along the busy Lowell-Snohomish River Road as it, presumably the same individual, occupied last May. We had to wait an hour by the side of the road while dump trucks and pick-up trucks and Amazon Prime vans and plain old passenger vehicles streamed past but once the flycatcher began to repeat its distinctive "chebik" call, even I heard it clearly.

5/13/2025   Big day plans  (link to here)
After scouting Wenas from Ellensburg to Selah and Hwy 12 from Naches to the Tieton airport, and researching recent sightings in Yakima and Klickitat counties, we have almost decided to take two days to do our "big day" this year. There are just too many spots we want to visit, and we are too slow! Darchelle has to do it all - drive the car, identify the birds (except those which are either singing or close enough for me to identify without optics), enter all the checklists, reposition the car to help me see and hear birds, get the scope out of the car to verify distant birds then put it away again, monitor Merlin, play recordings when necessary and take photos when possible. As if that weren't enough, she also has to help me to pee, feed me, adjust my headrest position, put blankets on me and take them off again and periodically readjust my torso, butt and feet to prevent pressure sores. It's enough to keep three people busy.
The itinerary + I put together assumes a two day effort but could be trimmed down to one day by skipping all the Hwy 12 stops, which collectively consume four hours. Our route M+ covers 400 miles and will take us at least 17 hours. With a little luck we should be able to find 170 species, 30 fewer than the pros but respectable enough considering our limitations. We could also pick up as many as a dozen year birds.

5/15/2025   Big day eve  (link to here)
We drove over to Selah from Seattle this afternoon, leaving a little too late to avoid traffic past downtown. The sky was overcast, the snow patches at the pass gone and the showy yellow Balsamroot east of Elk Heights mostly withered. The lupine and phlox were also faded; they were all at their peak a week ago.
On the way over here we checked the hummingbird feeders at the Denny Ave trailhead in Cle Elum but the feeders seemed to be mostly empty. In ten minutes we saw only one Rufous, and heard only a couple of House Finches and Evening Grosbeaks. Coming into Ellensburg we spotted a Swainson's Hawk chasing a Turkey Vulture over the freeway at mp 104, unusual that far up the valley. Leaving Ellensburg we drove the canyon, stopping on Burbank Road L+ near the south end to try for a MacGillivray's Warbler but heard only Bewick's Wrens, Lazuli Buntings and more House Finches. We got skunked at the Canyon Parkway L+ cliff in Selah too, finding no Barn Owls in any of the cavities. Now we're at the Selah Quality Inn where the bed looks good but Darchelle reports the toilet is too short. I haven't seen it yet and haven't decided in any case whether or not I should try to use it before we check out at 0300 tomorrow morning.
It looks as though we're going to go for the whole thing tomorrow. That's been Darchelle's preference all along; beating our last year's count of 152 gives her a tangible goal to aim for. For me the deciding factor was the weather forecast - wetter and windier on the west side on Saturday than tomorrow afternoon. We'll miss more birds with the one day trip; I doubt we'll break 150 but my prophetic talent tends to be tainted by pessimism.

5/16/2025   Big Day 2025  (link to here)
When we stepped out of the Quality Inn at 0305 an American Robin was already singing in the darkness. It was our first bird, but we didn't count it. The first birds we counted were at our first planned stop, the Roza Recreation Area ten minutes away in the Yakima River Canyon. There we heard a Common Poorwill calling from the hillside across the road, a pair of Yellow-breasted Chats singing to each other under the partly clouded moon and to our surprise, the regular hoots of a distant Long-eared Owl. We'd been expecting a Western Screech Owl, and a few minutes later we found one a mile up the road. We were underway.
We were on schedule at our second stop at Durr Road but we were a little early for the birds. They weren't quite singing yet, or so it seemed to me. The sky to the east was still dark; the moon was still half-hidden behind a patch of altocumulus and a gentle breeze was blowing from the west. I was hearing nothing other than the ringing in my ears and the rhythmic whoosh of my ventilator-assisted breathing, but beyond the silhouettes of the sagebrush along the road Darchelle was hearing songs - Brewer's and Vesper Sparrows, a distant Sage Thrasher, and as the darkness began to fade above the eastern horizon, the murmuring of Mountain Bluebirds. Before we left I was able to pick up every species she did except a Ring-necked Pheasant, my first miss of the morning.
At our next stop back on Umtanum Road I couldn't hear the Chukar calls - my second miss of the day. There were several other calls I couldn't hear as we continued onto North Wenas Road but I was able get those species when we ran across them again later in the day. We spent too much time on North Wenas and despite our efforts, found fewer birds than we expected. The air was cold - mid-30's - and the birds were just not singing. Elk were all over Ellensburg Pass though, running across the open hillsides with their dark manes catching the morning sunlight.
We were about 10 birds short and 40 minutes late as we started down the Wenas Valley towards Selah. Trying to make up time we skipped Maloy Road, the White-throated Swift cliff near Naches and the marshes south of Toppenish but kept Kerry's Pond and several Hwy 97 stops on our evolving itinerary. Those stops were productive and by the time we crossed into Klickitat County we were back on schedule. I was feeling discouraged by our lack of birds; perhaps I would have felt better had I realized that we were only five species behind last year's pace for birds but a full two hours ahead of last year's schedule.
We spent about two hours in Klickitat County, about the same as last year, but added three additional species, including the Wahkiakus Blue-gray Gnatcatcher for which we might have made a second pilgrimage down to the gorge. We might yet do that just for the scenery, which was stunning. We followed Horseshoe Bend Road east from Goldendale through farmland for a few miles then across gently rolling prairie where blue and yelllow flowers crown dry knolls and lush grass carpets meandering swales below the snow-covered dome of Mount Adams. Continuing east we passed through open groves of gnarled oaks and tall pines before descending a narrow gravel track into the dramatic canyon of the Klickitat River. Across the river we found the gnatcatchers in their usual spot, a sunny hillside overlooking the river where pale blue Ceanothus and other less showy shrubs tangle with dark green oaks and pines. I could barely hear the whiny calls of the gnatcatchers but caught a few glimpses as they chased each other through the bushes.
I did not hear the distant Ash-throated Flycatchers but fortunately we found more of those along Balch Road, where we also got both Acorn and Lewis's Woodpeckers. Our final Klickitat bird and #112 since leaving Selah was a Canyon Wren which sang while we were waiting to pull out onto Hwy 14 from Old Hwy 8. We tried for one more, a White-throated Swift at the cliff just west of Lock Lake, but couldn't pick one out from among the swallows wheeling high above the rim.
The main point of creating and following an itinerary for our route today was to ensure that we had enough time to drive the Auto Tour loop at Ridgefield and we did, arriving only 20 minutes later than I had planned. We heard lots of Soras and thanks to Darchelle's diligent scanning with binoculars, saw almost all the ducks we had hoped to find there. We had hoped for a bittern too but it didn't show.
The drive out to the coast gave us each a memorable sighting. For me it was a Hermit Warbler at Dryad Cemetery which careened out of the woods and across the hood of the car looking for the intruder it heard singing from Darchelle's phone. A tiny bird gray and white on the wings and body with a yellow head, it almost sparkled against the forest backdrop despite the dull afternoon overcast. Memorable for Darchelle was a big Pileated Woodpecker flapping down highway 6 ahead of us near Rainbow Falls. I had fallen asleep a few minutes earlier and missed it.
At Graveyard Spit in Tokeland the tide was high but starting to ebb revealing mud which began to lure shorebirds back into scope range. Like too many of the day's birds they were just dots to me but Darchelle identified seven species. Heading out to the beach on Warrenton Cannery Road she found two more, including the Red-necked Phalaropes we were unable to find in the Columbia Basin last week. In a freshwater seep at the edge of the dunegrass off Midway we found our final shorebird of the day, a pair of Snowy Plovers.
Rain and wind discouraged us from scanning for seabirds at the Westport Lighthouse. I wasn't up for getting out into the wheelchair and the only views of the water are not open to unauthorized vehicles so we settled for looping around the parking lot and concluded our big day + at dusk with a Killdeer and a Least Sandpiper, neither new for the day. We had driven 430 miles, birded 17 hours and between the two of us seen or heard 156 species. Even after missing four of them I tied our last year's total of 152. Darchelle missed only one. We also added 13 species to our year list. And we made it to Ridgefield.
Here is an annotated list of our checklists and our eBird Trip Report +.
Rowan did a big day the day after we did and tallied 180 species + on a similar route but taking Hwy 12 over White Pass instead of Hwy 14 through the gorge. He had someone to drive so he could focus on birding and entering lists but nonetheless, he found birds that we did not. Here are some of the birds that we missed:
The day after our effort, Liam and three others set a new big day record of 210 species + on a route starting in Klickitat County and including Ridgefield.

5/17/2025   Ocean Shores  (link to here)
We spent the night at the Best Western in Aberdeen. At $201 it was more expensive than the Hoquiam Econolodge where we usually stay but the breakfast was available until 10 AM and included bacon with the scrambled eggs. I didn't try the toilet but the bed was comfortable and we slept well.
Rather than take the time to finish submitting our checklists, we went out birding. Darchelle wanted to drive the beach at Ocean Shores and I wanted to pick up oysters at Lytles, but we stopped first at Hoquiam STP to check for shorebirds, migrants and the Little Gull Liam photographed four days ago and five miles away on a sand bar in the middle of the bay. We didn't find the Little Gull but Darchelle identified a fairly rare Pectoral Sandpiper on the far side of the middle pond and I spotted, then heard, our first Swainson's Thrush of the year.
About a quarter mile before Lytles, Darchelle noticed a long-winged and very dark buteo teetering like a Turkey Vulture as it dipped and sailed low over the trees. I thought it was a Turkey Vulture but she correctly recognized it as a Swainson's Hawk, a rare migrant on the west side. She got photos, then got my oysters.
The beach was crowded with jeeps flaunting flags exhorting "GO TOPLESS". Most of the drivers were overweight middle-aged white men with excessive facial hair and we were inclined to criticize their misogyny until an hour or so later when we saw a sign in town welcoming jeepers to a Jeep convention. "Topless", we realized, referred to the vehicles and not to female beach visitors, of which there were in any case very few. There weren't many birds either.
Down at the Point Brown jetty the beach access is closed to motor vehicles for the summer so we parked in the paved lot while Darchelle scoped the channel. I watched through my opera glasses from inside the car because the breeze was cold and from time to time wet as well, though when the sky cleared between showers the sun streaming through my open window felt wonderful. Through my glasses I was able to distinguish ponderously large dark birds - Brown Pelicans, long-necked black birds - Cormorants, short-necked black birds - Surf Scoters, variously pale medium-large birds mostly well above the water - Gulls, and barely visible ghostly-gray birds whose quick and erratic flight indicated that they were much smaller than the gulls. These birds, Darchelle confirmed, were Common Terns. Identifying them out in the Grays Harbor channel saved us a day trip up to Drayton Harbor on the Canadian border so we were pleased about that.
At Brady Loop on our way home at sunset we heard an American Bittern, a day late, as were the other half dozen species we saw today but not yesterday.

5/21/2025   Fallout  (link to here)
Darchelle worked yesterday so we are still at home this morning, having not yet made plans to go anywhere else. This week is the peak of spring migration though, and we've been intending to get out somewhere to experience it. This morning that somewhere was our back deck.
We got a late start. At 9:30 we were still in bed when Darchelle checked her phone for bird reports and discovered more than 40 new messages on the King County WhatsApp chat. Birders in neighborhoods all over North Seattle were posting about the unusual numbers of warblers they had been noticing this morning. Darchelle got me up, brewed a bit of coffee, wrapped me in my electric blanket and wheeled me out the back door. The sky was overcast but the air was not too cold. The morning rush on the flight path to SeaTac was still underway and a jet rumbled overhead every couple of minutes but during the gaps between planes, we could hear birds singing. But no warblers, just the local robins, juncos and finches.
I spotted my first migrant about 15 minutes later when a Yellow Warbler flew across the yard from the commercial district southwest of us. About the same time Darchelle heard an Orange-crowned Warbler out front. We were comparing notes when we heard the "wit" calls of a Swainson's Thrush in our neighbor's back yard, and shortly after that I spotted a Wilson's Warbler in our Wax Myrtle. We had our own "fallout"', a birding word for when large numbers of nocturnal migrants settle down at dawn to feed and rest after flying overnight. Think airport coffee shop after the red-eye flights arrive, or something like that.
While the Wilson's was still flitting around in the bushes and small trees of our back yard a Warbling Vireo began to sing n our neighbor's hemlock trees, but that was about it for our fallout. The male Hairy Woodpecker tapping on our willow trunk and the Golden-crowned Kinglet calling in our apple tree were unusual but were probably not migrants. Regarding the kinglet, Merlin not infrequently reports one in our back yard; what was unusual was that I for once was able to hear it. Of our five migrants this morning (probably a yard record), all but the Orange-crowned were new for the year in our yard and the Swainson's Thrush was our first ever, boosting our yard list to 78 all time and 40 for the year.
We wrapped up our checklist L+ after a couple of hours; Darchelle had to leave for an appointment and I had her move me inside in case the sun came out. Direct sunlight, perhaps due to glare on my reading glasses, tends to prevent my eye-gaze device from reading my eyes. Had that happened I could still have listened to an audiobook (currently The Pillars of the Earth) on my phone but I wanted to finish writing before another rare bird turns up.

5/22/2025   Swifts  (link to here)
It was not a rare bird but a promise to visit Darchelle's folks in Walla Walla that prompted us to hit the road this afternoon, a day earlier than originally planned. Leaving early would allow us to avoid the Memorial Day traffic heading out of town tomorrow afternoon and give us time to chase a few target birds on our way east. With luck we could be pushing 300 by the weekend.
Black Swift was not one of the birds I was expecting to get. We always keep an eye out for them when we're heading east on I-90 towards Snoqualmie Pass but they haven't all arrived in the state at this point (most of our spring sightings are in the first half of June) and I have only been able to spot them from the freeway once or twice in the past decade. Conditions were favorable though; the morning overcast over the lowlands had receded back into the mountains but still obscured the summits and higher ridges where the swifts would normally forage in the afternoon, so I was watching the sky closely as we began the climb out of North Bend.
We were just passing exit 42 L+ when I shouted "Swifts! Stop the car!" There were at least three of them and they were at a perfect height - silhouetted against the sky so we could find them and low enough that we could identify them. Normally swifts at that height would be Vaux's but these birds had long thin wings swept back in the shape of a bow and their flight consisted of a series of smoothly connected arcs uninterrupted by flapping. When they did flap their wings, every few seconds or so, the wingbeats were slow enough that I could almost count them. Black Swifts!
Darchelle pulled over to the (fortunately wide) shoulder immediately and jumped out of the car with her binoculars. As she was tracking the original birds, they were joined by several Vaux's Swifts giving us a relatively rare opportunity to compare the two species side by side. They are often not that easy to tell apart. Compared to their larger cousins, the Vaux's (you say "Voxes", I say "Vose") are smaller with shorter and wider (particularly near the body) wings and more erratic flight - lots of sharp turns with short glides and frequent brief bouts of flapping. When they flap the wings appear to beat alternately rather than in unison like other birds and the wingbeats are so fast that they are almost jut a blur. Some people use color (Vaux's are paler on the throat and breast) or the length and shape of the tail (Vaux's is shorter) but I have not found those characteristics as helpful as the behavioral clues for distinguishing the two species.
Our first target species was an American Redstart recently reported at King Horn Slough L+ on the north side of I-90 west of exit 78. The site was new for us but I think we'll return. An old oxbow of the Yakima River, the slough itself wasn't visible from the narrow access road, hidden behind a dense thicket of small trees and tall shrubs - among them alder, water birch, willow, cherry and red-stem dogwood - flourishing beneath an open canopy of cottowood, pine and Doug fir. Traffic noise was fairly intrusive but not loud enough drown out the songs of the redstarts (at least 2), Yellow Warblers (10?) and other warblers in the neighborghood. We played a few calls to coax a Veery to join the chorus too. It was our 299th species for the year, and the redstart, my 206th Kittitas County bird.
The Lesser Nighthawk which turned up in Getty's Cove L+ last year has returned to its tree so this evening so did we. It took us a while to remember exactly which Chinese Elm limb had been its habitual roost and when we did the nighthawk, contrary to earlier reports, was not roosting on it. It took Darchelle considerably longer to locate its current roost high in another Chinese Elm no more than 50 feet from the original one. By then the afternoon was getting long in the tooth and the bird was apparently getting restless. It stood up to stretch and Darchelle noticed the motion. She had known roughly where to look because every twenty minutes or so the bird had given a few brief calls - enough to let us know it was around but not enough or us to pinpoint its location.
Returning to Ellensburg we found the Day's Inn fully booked so for not much less money we reserved a smaller but still workable room at the Econolodge at exit 105. We drove up to Liberty at sunset and tooled around forest roads until long after dark before we managed to find a Flammulated Owl calling near the top of Swauk Ridge along NF 9705.

5/24/2025   Walla Walla  (link to here)
Early this morning we made the one hour drive up to the bench on Biscuit Ridge to find the two species which we rely on that location to provide - Green-tailed Towhee and Dusky Grouse. Both can be found elsewhere (the grouse at Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop and the towhee along Kendall Skyline Road south of Dayton) but it's convenient to get both in the same place, especially when we are already staying nearby. We arrived at the bench at 7 AM and immediately heard a singing towhee. I might also have heard a Dusky Grouse calling but the low-pitched sound was at the threshold of my ability to detect it. It could have been a phantom but after she got out of the car she heard it clearly. She also saw it fly; I only heard the flurry of its wingbeats, though I saw another in the road as we were headed back down.
As we were exiting Hwy 12 at the airport road around 9:30 AM Darchelle had a brief view of a Black Swift (I had only a glimpse) but when I put perhaps too much emphasis on its rarity, she decided not to report it. Late that afternoon a birder named Matt reported +another Black Swift at the same location, a sighting the Denny's rushed over to confirm +. Seeing both reports approved in eBird we submitted ours as well, figuring that the swift must have spent the day in the area. In the afternoon reports it had been with Vaux's Swifts and while ours had been alone, we'd seen two Vaux's a couple of minutes later while we were waiting for our coffee at Walla Walla Roastery so we reasonably assumed that our Black Swift, which we'd been unable to refind, had also been with Vaux's.
Then a birder named Jef B who'd seen the reports on the Walla Walla chat drove over there with his camera. When he was unable to find the Black Swift he posted photos of a scruffy and unusually dark Vaux's Swift and in a move that struck me as both presumptious and arrogant, claimed that the other two reports had mistaken that bird for a Black Swift because it was dark and not flapping as much as the other Vaux's. His comments sounded like sour grapes to me but Matt, acknowledging on the chat that his Black Swift had looked "rough", changed his checklist without further comment. The Dennys quietly did likewise.
I was reluctant to withdraw our report but having not seen the Black Swift well myself, I agreed with Darchelle that given its rarity we didn't have enough information to defend our sighting. We deleted our checklist.
After lunch we persuaded Richard and Donna to come with us to Theresa's Hummingbird Haven L+. Ben, Sally and the kids joined us. Theresa was apparently not home but her hummingbirds were. We parked ourselves at a respectful distance then inched closer like dogs sneaking up to the dinner table when no one is watching. The hummingbirds didn't care and I appreciated the close views of the birds. As many as five at a time of both Black-chinned and Calliope fed, or at least buzzed around, the patio feeders I was watching. Assuming each individual feeds on average once every 15 minutes, I estimated we saw about 25 of each. During the hour I twice saw a solo female Rufous. Compared to the other two species she looked like a dwarf from Lord of the Rings, burly and orange. The Calliopes appeared generally brownish and nondescript at a distance. At close range short, stout and pale green above, warm white below, they would be the hummingbird equivalent of hobbits while the Black-chins, tall and slender with dark green back, white collar and a dusky vest over white underparts, would be elves.
We went home and watched religious programming (Richard and Donna), read a novel (Brian) and made strawberry shortcake (Darchelle) while Ben, Sally and family drove up into the Blues to look for morels. They brought home one or two each (from above 4000 ft, according to Ben) along with tales of seeing both a Bobcat and a Great Gray Owl, the latter up near the high point of the Biscuit Ridge Road near a red cabin.

5/25/2025   What's left?  (link to here)
Having achieved my goal of 300 species in the state before the end of May, I'm feeling a bit at loose ends (as Mom would put it when I seemed bored as a child) so I thought I would put together a list of non-pelagic species which we don't have yet but should be able to find by October.
List updated 6/02.
Breeding birds Fall migrants/visitors Vagrants

5/29/2025   309  (link to here)
We departed home for Omak shortly after 1 PM, not quite early enough to miss the afternoon traffic through downtown but it didn't set us back much. We left with a list of nine birds we hoped to find and about twice that number of places to visit to look for them. Our first stop was just out in North Bend. I thought we might be able to find a Willow Flycatcher in the Scotch Broom field next to the Tunnel Marathon finish area and we did, though we might not have taken the time to stop had I remembered how common they are out in the Colville valley and beyond.
Our next stop was over the pass in Cle Elum, where a Red-eyed Vireo had been reported at the Cle Elum boat launch L+. It was still there up in the cottonwood crowns singing along with Yellow Warblers and Western Wood-Pewees at 3:30 in the afternoon. Late May is a great time for birdwatching not least because the birds sing all day long.
Given that we weren't planning to stop up around Swauk Pass, we were unlikely to find an Olive-sided Flycatcher before we reached Omak so that left Eastern Kingbird as our only remaining target for the afternoon. I scanned wires, fencelines and the tops of roadside bushes all the way from Wenatchee to Chelan in vain, then when we stopped at Beebe Springs Natural Area L+ to adjust the pads for my butt (it gets sore when I sit too long in the car without extra padding), one flew up to a bush next to the car. It was #309 for the year.
Although we drove it in April last year seeking life birds for Okanogan County (without success), Darchelle and I had never traversed the Cameron Lakes Road L+ in the summer. It was both more beautiful and more bird-rich than we anticipated. No new year birds but both Stilt and Avocet were new for the county.

5/30/2025   Moses Mountain  (link to here)
Recalling our morning in the Nespelem valley a year ago we made it a priority to get back there this weekend but not enough of a priority to get there as early as we would have liked.
When we did get there we got distracted by a side trip up the Mill Creek Road L+ and never did find our way back to the valley.
We followed upper Mill Creek Road L+ up to Moses Mountain L+ but were turned back by snow in our bid to reach the summit. Descending the southeast side of the mountain we expected to drop back down to Nespelem but went the wrong way on BIA 116 L+ and ended up north of the mountain at REL="noopener">Moses Meadows M+.
That route rewarded us with a juvenile American Goshawk which flushed across the road right in front of our car somewhere east of the mountain. A large Acipiter with a notably bulky body, it had heavy brown streaks extending down to the undertail coverts and an overall buffy appearance below. Darchelle also noticed a prominent pale supercilium.
We had no signal at Moses Meadows so we turned to the DeLorme Atlas to plot our route to Republic. The Aeneas Valley Road east to Hwy 21 appeared to be the most direct route and the map portrayed it as a good quality gravel road. It wasn't. For the first several miles it was wide and smooth but it gradually deteriorated and after fording a rocky stream and a very large puddle, the gravel surface yielded to grassy double-track pitted with potholes in spite of its apparent lack of use. Although blowdowns had been moved out of the way, the cows had not and a couple of times we had to herd sturdy black Angus calves for a hundred yards or more before they would turn off the narrow track. Had a couple in an SUV less capable than ours not assured us that the way ahead was passable we might have turned around. At least the scenery was impressive.
Beautiful too, if you like old burns. We were pretty tired of burned forest at that point, having been driving for the previous eight hours and 50+ miles through forest burned by the North Star Fire + in September 2015. That fire burned 340 square miles +, from Mill Creek north and east almost to Republic, including much of Moses Mountain and the West Fork of the Sanpoil River valley at the eastern end of the Aeneas Valley Road. Darchelle and I had driven the Aeneas Valley Road from Hwy 21 to Tonasket with Andy and Ellen in June 2016 when the landscape was still black and had marveled at the birds singing in the charred bushes along the stream. Charred trunks still tower over the stream, which is now well-hidden by riparian thickets ten feet tall, and I suspect that the bird populations, except for tree-dwelling species, have recovered. We did a brief checklist L+ but didn't record much activity perhaps because it was late afternoon and we were eager to be done with the Aeneas Valley Road.
We intended to reach Colville by 6 PM but despite arriving an hour and a half late I wanted to try for the Bobolinks and the Clay-colored Sparrow on Mantz-Rickey Road L+ this evening rather than waiting until morning. We found them both but the sun had set by the time we checked into the motel.

5/31/2025   313  (link to here)
Thinking that the small cluster of cottonwoods, willows and tall riparian shrubs along Mantz-Rickey Road L+ east of the railroad tracks might have attracted a migrant or two overnight we returned this morning but found only the usual suspects.
Mixing it up this year, we decided to forego our customary visit to the Kalispell Valley and spent extra time along Hwy 20 east of Colville at Flodelle Creek L+ and Amazon Creek Marsh L+ instead. Both were full of birds; we could hear them singing but they mostly stayed hidden in the dense thicket of willow, hawthorne, dogwood and other shrubs along the stream. With the help of Merlin and a little playback we were able to identify most of the songs and even get a few photos. Lots of Yellow Warblers, American Redstarts and Northern Waterthrushes.
Before heading down to Spokane to look for Black Terns, an annual effort we were not inclined to forego, we drove up the Olsen Creek (aka Tacoma Creek) Road hoping to get up into Three-toed Woodpecker habitat. The woodpeckers prefer spruce-fir forest or spruce and Lodgepole Pine above about 5000' (or recently burned mixed conifers at lower elevations, though they still like some spruce in the mix) and we couldn't find a road to take us that high.
As we were heading south about six miles out of Colville a Northern Mockingbird flew over our car. At least that's what I think it was. I didn't report it right away because Darchelle hadn't seen it and we weren't able to relocate it. Here's the description I posted to eBird L+: We looked first for the terns at the Saltese ponds east of Spokane, location of the most recent reports, but though we circumnavigated the extensive marsh by car and scoped the ponds from several locations, we found none. An hour later we did not find terns at marshes near Cheney either. The Turnbull NWR Auto Tour route was our last hope but we got lost trying to navigate to it. We ended up driving south through pine forest and windswept prairie on Mullins Road then following Williams Lake Road east to the road we should have taken, Rock Lake Road. Williams Lake, like its larger cousin Rock Lake, is lined with cliffs and appears to have been gouged out of the Columbia plateau basalts by the same floods.
The terns don't seem to like those big deep lakes, favoring shallow lakes with marshy margins like McDowell Lake L+, directly across Rock Lake Road from the entrance to the Turnbull Auto Tour. That is where we found a flock of twenty or more foraging high and low over the water unfazed by the wind.
Thinking we might head home today we didn't book a motel room in advance but we didn't find Black Terns until 6 PM and by then we were too tired to tackle the four-hour drive back to Seattle. Ritzville is apparently not a weekend getaway destination because we found the Best Western almost empty when we showed up at 7.
May is always the biggest month of the birding year. This May we spent all or part of thirteen days in the field, submitted 83 complete checklists and saw or heard 219 species for the month. For the year we added 61 species to conclude May with 313 species, six ahead of last year and ten behind 2022.

6/1/2025   Vagrants  (link to here)
We wrapped up our four day Eastside trip + by checking half a dozen vagrant traps between Hooper and Vantage. We had a handful of migrant species, particularly Western Wood Peewees, Western Tanagers and Wilson's Warblers, and two tantalizing unidentified birds. The first was a possible Broad-winged Hawk circling up and off to the northeast of Washtucna. A buteo by shape, it appeared all pale below and slightly smaller than the raven which was diving on it. Too bad the camera wouldn't focus on it. The second was a bird which appeared entirely bright red below, perched upright facing me in a tree across the street at Hooper. My first impression was Northern Cardinal but it was too small. I couldn't get Darchelle on it before it flew off with several House Finches. That is probably what it was but I have never seen a House Finch appear that red, especially at that distance. Possibly a Summer Tanager?
For the trip we had 133 species east of the Cascades and found seven of the nine year birds I thought we might be able to get. We explored some new areas, (Moses Mountain, Little Pend Oreille, Williams Lake) and found some old friends, including the Bobolinks and the Clay-colored Sparrow on Mantz-Rickey Road, the Northern Waterthrushes at Amazon Creek and the Black Terns at Turnbull. Although I never got out of the car I heard or at least glimpsed most if not all of the birds and came home feeling satiated by the beauty of the landscapes, forests and flowers we saw.

6/8/2025   American Three-toed Woodpecker  (link to here)
Of Washington's 13 species of resident woodpeckers, the American Three-toed is not the most difficult to find, but it's close. We've missed it and its cousin the Black-backed each once in the past ten years; all the others we've seen at least once every year. We probably try harder for the Three-toed. We used to work harder for Black-backs but they like burns, particularly burned pines, so they're getting easier to find as more of the state's conifers go up in flames every summer. It's a small consolation for the loss of the forests but faced with the destruction for generations of so much mature forest habitat, it's good to know that at least one bird is benefiting.
We've tried twice in the past month for a Three-toed, both times without success, but since it is one of just a handful of species we could add to our year list this month, we decided to try again. Three of them were reported + recently at Government Meadows M+ on the Cascade Crest east of Enumclaw. The words "Cascade Crest" conjure up visions of snow-clad crags but those are mostly north of Snoqualmie Pass. South to the Columbia Gorge the crest traverses mostly tamer terrain of which Government Meadows and nearby Naches Pass are representative. Thanks to the relatively gentle topography and low elevation, much of the region was clearcut nearly half a century ago, after the lowland old growth was gone and before the declining numbers of Spotted Owls began to constrain the cutting of what was left. The dense stands of young Noble Firs which have regenerated in those clearcuts don't support woodpeckers yet (not for another 200+ years) or loggers either (I'm guessing another 30-50 years up near the crest) but pockets of old growth remain. One of those pockets must border Government Meadows; we don't know for sure because we couldn't get there.
The birds were seen along the Naches Trail which Goognle, with unmerited confidence in the capabilites of our Subaru, claimed that we could negotiate. We tried, at first off FR 7065 where we were thwarted by foot-deep ruts and had to back down a rocky 20% grade (actually not as exciting as it first appeared) and again less than a mile from our destination where the trail became a U-shaped trough not quite as wide as our wheelbase. There a couple of dirt-bikers my age helpfully informed us that vehicle access to the meadows was blocked by a locked gate. Apparently John had walked in. If we had called and asked him about that (Darchelle and I both suffer on occasion from the stereotypically male reluctance to ask for directions) we probably would not have gone up there, and would not have found our Three-toed Woodpecker.
Our woodpecker, which can be distinguished from almost everyone else's Three-toed Woodpecker by its orange outer rectrices, aka tail feathers, was not in any of the pockets of old growth along the road down the east side of the crest. We looked in each one. Our woodpecker was down in the Douglas Fir-Western Hemlock zone in a pocket of dead trees L+ at 3200' along the Little Naches River. When I noticed the dead trees I had a hunch they might harbor a woodpecker. Some of the dead trees were spruces and Three-toed Woodpeckers love dead spruces so I asked Darchelle to turn aound, go back and play a few calls. Sapsuckers responded right away. We heard one drumming immediately then two came in close, one Red-naped and one Red-breasted. The Three-toed stayed high in the dead trees but was clearly responding to Darchelle's calls. When it eventually perched lower down her photos confirmed the ID.

6/9/2025   Wild things  (link to here)
Darchelle and I sat on the back deck this morning for coffee and breakfast. Seattle is in the second day of a heat wave so the temperature outside the French doors was about the same as inside, even in the shade. A heat wave is, in my opinion anyhow, a minor price to pay for the pleasure of an unfettered view of our near-wild back yard. We discussed whether any of the wild things - the Snowberry, the Wax Myrtle, the Scouler Willow, the Vine Maple - needed pruning or tying back and agreed that only the neighbor's holly, and perhaps our apple tree, should be cut back a little. We also did a casual eBird checklist L+ but recorded only seven species; bird activity in the back yard has declined significantly over the past few weeks, a consequence both of the progressing season and our removal of the seed feeders, which had attracted a new family of rats. Our neighbors dislike the rats. Personally I don't mind them any more than I do than any of the other unauthorized wild things that frequent our yard but it is important not to distress the neighbors, whom we like.

6/13/2025   Quail  (link to here)
This evening I was sitting at the window watching the sunset over the valley and the California Quail puttering around under her folks's backyard feeders while I edited April photos on my eye-gaze laptop. I have for several months been thnking that the laptop screen would be too small for me to use Lightroom effectively on it, but as a result I haven't been working with photos at all because I rarely use the desktop anymore. The prospect of a week in Walla Walla with lots of eye-gaze time inspired me to give Lightroom on the laptop a try. It works! Lacking the disk space of the desktop I imported my presets and our recent photos to a smaller catalog and processed more than two dozen photos yesterday alone.
Two or three pairs of quail visit the feeders, foraging together in the mowed grass for seeds dropped by the other birds. I thought they were pairs anyhow - one bird an obvious adult male and the other slightly smaller and generally pale brown, and like the male also bearing a topknot though hers is smaller and more discreet than her partner's, if they are partners. I'm not sure if what I observed this evening was hot sex between members of a mated pair or a vigorous dispute between a juvenile male and an adult.
I didn't see how it started but I looked up and saw an adult male and a female-type standing face to face, their chests almost touching. Both birds leaped up almost a foot into the air and bumped their chests together, then repeated that move several times in quick succession as if they were bouncing on springs. After a brief pause they repeated the hopping and chest-bumping, sometimes pecking at each other as well. When the female-type turned aside the male gave pursuit but she only went a foot or so before she turned to face him and they resumed the chest-bumping. She ran several times, the male pursuing her each time and the last time jumping up on her back as if to copulate, but they moved so quickly I couldn't really tell what happened. Eventually, like after maybe 40 seconds, he chased her away from the feeders and I returned to my photos, but I don't think she stayed away long. I noticed chasing several more times before dark.
My internet here is spotty and is currently spot-off but when it returns I'll do a little research and see if I can figure out what was going on. (Later) From Birds of the World + I learned that the two birds were in fact male and female but that the behaviors - Jump Up, Peck Threat, Peck and Chase - were characteristic not of courtship but of combat which would normally involve two males. Maybe this was BDSM courtship.

6/14/2025   Sabbath morning  (link to here)
I remembered a medley of dreams last night but none of them well enough to record or interpret. A Great Egret foraging underwater at the Walla River delta. Climbing several stories high on a metal building framework in an unsuccessful effort to reach a restaurant whose chef I wanted to work with. In another one, more complex, I had become a Christian and was walking through dull gray hallways towards a friend whom I would try to convert. I woke up feeling liberated, as though I would not be required to pray and be good.
Sally hosted everyone for lunch on their back patio, haystacks with her home-canned salsa and Alicia's garlic Ranch dressing. We met Daniel's girlfriend Christina and her parents and Christina talked with us for several minutes, which was nice. Sitting at the party off in a sunny corner with Darchelle and Donna, I watched the other guests and wished that I could describe people. They are often at least as interesting as birds, albeit like most mammals, not as beautiful. I tried coming up with a few brief descriptions but it is as if I lack not only the skill but even the vocabulary to convey an impression of someone in a few sentences. Anyhow for me lunch went down well; I ate half a plateful of chips, beans, toppings and sauces chased down with Darchelle's cream of green bean soup without so much as a tickle, when sometimes just the soup alone gives me trouble.

6/16/2025   Father's Day dream  (link to here)
I recalled another dream last night, or at least the second half of it anyhow. As usual Ihave forgotten some possibly significant details but unlike with other dreams recently, I remember enough of this one to attempt an interpretation. Sometime yesterday I heard a reference or two to Father's Day, which may have inspired this dream with its references to both my father (the path in the field cleared by a snowblower) and myself as a father (the man with two children). My father is a memory; as my father his relationship wih me is frozen in place and time like the snowpack blanketing the field, unchanged even by the warmth of spring. The man with children, though headed towards that immutable past, isn't there yet. There is a little time yet before my chidren's relationships with and memories of me are frozen.
Sitting on the corrugated steel roof recalls another childhood memory, of my father and mother sitting with friends on the shed roof outside the shed chamber windows after an early spring ski race. They were for an hour or two that sunny afternoon not parents with children but friends with friends. In the dream Darchelle and I have taken the place of my parents on the roof. In the present it is our life together that matters.
In our present life together we watch birds, including one occasion a Woodcock, which I always associate with my childhood home in Jackson though I've never seen it there. The bird's activity reminds me of preparing a garden for planting in the spring, an annual activity for me in the past back when I was a father with children and did not have Darchelle. But why is the bird a Kiwi, the image taken from a tin of Kiwi shoe polish? Kiwis remind me of New Zealand, which evokes nothing in me, but unlike a Woodcock, a Kiwi is a bird which cannot engage in the one activity which makes a bird a bird. It cannot fly. I can relate to that, being unable to engage in the activity (activities) which define my kind. I apparently don't think of myself as a flightless Kiwi but rather as a flight-capable, albeit odd-looking, Woodcock.