1/02/2026     (link to here)
We began the new year yesterday morning with a backyard checklist L+ of course, then did another list L+ this morning. We are now up to 22 species on our Washington year list, all of them in Walla Walla county. Although I'm not excited about any birding adventures in the new year, I did enjoy watching the juncos and sparrows around the bird feeders in Richard and Donna's back yard the past two mornings. Darchelle sat with me some of the time, gave me sips of coffee and kefir, took a few photos of the birds and leaned me forward in my wheelchair now and then so I could pass gas.
Speaking took effort but I was able to toss a comment or two into the conversation happening behind me. Ricardo brought up an idea he had heard recently, about considering what kind of person we want to be at age 80 then adopting habits of thought and behavior that will help us become that kind of person. Apart from the prospect that I will be ashes in an urn well before age 80, I questioned the implied assumption that we are actually able to change our personality and character to any significant degree, particularly if our objective is to comply with some external ideal. But I suppose it can't hurt to try...

1/03/2026   Short-eared Owl  (link to here)
Visiting with Darchelle's family has had a higher priority than birding so far this year but this afternoon we ventured out for an hour to try again to add a Short-eared Owl to our Walla Walla County list. The owl is usually rare in the county but for at least two years now a few have wintered in a patch of weedy grassland sandwiched between fields of wheat stubble in the rolling hills along Harvey Shaw Road northeast of the State Prison. We've tried for them a couple of times but without much conviction. Today we drove out there at sunset and didn't need much conviction. The first bird we saw after passing the Penitentiary was a Short-eared Owl sailing over wheat stubble along Hwy 125.
The second was a Harlan's Hawk, perhaps the same individual Darchelle photographed two months ago in College Place.
Turning onto Harvey Shaw Road L+ we caught up to the owl perched on a speed limit signpost. Darchelle got photos. A mile north on Harvey Shaw Road we found the rest of the local raptors, as many as five in view at one time coursing low over the hillsides. Now and then one would wheel abruptly and plunge into the grass. We didn't see any come up with prey but there must be lots of mice there to attract so many hawks.

1/05/2026   County Birds  (link to here)
On our way home we chased a few county birds in the still-soggy Snoqualmie Valley. I spotted the Ross's Goose near Sikes Lake L+ (the tiny white dot in the lower left center of the photo) immediately and a few minutes later Darchelle found the Rough-legged Hawk along nearby NE 100th St. We were a few days too late to see the Great Egret, which has not been reported since the last day of 2025. We were glad that our other targets chose to stick around and wait for our return.
The rarest bird we saw was a gull which I've never seen in Washington - a Kumlien's Iceland Gull. It and Thayer's became the eastern and western subspecies of the Iceland Gull in 2017. Structurally they are identical or close to it but the Kumlien's has white to gray wingtips and the Thayer's, gray to black. Immature plumages of Kumlien's are paler overall than corresponding plumages of Thayer's as well.
A bird more easily confused with a 1st winter (1W) Thayer's Gull is the 1W American Herring Gull we also identified in the gull puddle along NE 100st St. In the Herring Gull, the bill is longer, the overall tone of the plumage is warmer and the primary tips lack the frosted edges of the Thayer's.
Most of the gulls in the puddle were 1W Glaucous-winged Gulls. While these large gray-brown gulls are not striking in their appearance, they are distinctive among immature gulls because of their uniform color. Body feathers, wing coverts, primaries and tail are all the same shade of dull brown.
We concluded the afternoon with a search for the Glaucous Gull which we saw with Greg on the 31st, scanning the gull flock in the pastures and produce fields of Steel Wheel Farm L+ until dusk but without success.

1/08/2026   Taiga Flycatcher  (link to here)
Sometime last month a Taiga Flycatcher was discovered in an urban waterfront park in North Vancouver. Had it been in Washington we would have dashed off to see it for it would have been both a state bird (new for us in the state of Washington) and a life bird (new for us in the ABA area, that is, North America north of Mexico), as well as a year bird (new for the current year in Washington) and a county bird (new in whichever county it was located). Every lister has their priorities; for me they are state, year, life and county, in that order.
My listing priorities rendered the Taiga Flycatcher in British Columbia, despite it being only the second North American record of this Asian species, a relatively unimportant bird for us. Were it not for our FOMO we might not have bothered to make the trip but Fear Of Missing Out finally impelled us to dig out our passports and venture across the border into the foreign country of Canada. We would almost certainly never have another opportunity to see this bird, which so many other local birdwatchers were seeing, and the longer we waited, the greater our chances of missing it would be. So we went.
The border crossing was easy. Trump notwithstanding, Canadians apparently still admit us ugly Americans into their country. Google navigation still worked and we found Sunset Beach Park L+ without much difficulty. We spotted the bird, thanks to another birder with a big lens, even before we found a parking place. I waited in the car while Darchelle joined the posse of photographers chasing it around the park and got a few photos of our own.
Once safely back in the USA, where paramilitary thugs are seizing and imprisoning people whose skin color differs from that of their president and his supporters, we stopped at the Blaine Marina L+ to look for the Yellow-billed Loon which other people have been seeing there. The breeze was cold so I watched from the car with my opera glasses while Darchelle scoped the bay and identified the distant water birds, including the loon. I saw that one but couldn't pick out the Pacific Loons, and maybe not the Long-tailed Ducks either. At least I had seen the flycatcher.

1/15/2026   Piano Ranch  (link to here)
We returned to the Snoqualmie Valley near Fall City for the third time this month, this time to search for a Palm Warbler reported a few days ago at the Piano Ranch. Piano Ranch is a small natural area across the street from the Steel Wheel Farm, where we searched unsuccessfully for the Glaucous Gull on our previous two visits. It, like most everything else in the Snoqualmie Valley, sits in the floodplain of the Snoqualmie River and preserves some of the native cottonwood forest which I assume was once the dominant, or at least successional, plant community in the area. Agriculture, with a mix of pastures, hayfields and croplands, dominates the valley now though the river is still in charge, as indicated by the grass and weeds left hanging at head height from roadside bushes by late December floods.
We didn't find the warbler today though I think someone else did, so it is apparently still in the area. Darchelle was eager to see it but acknowledged that our chances of getting it on the first try were slim. Chasing Palm Warblers is not my favorite form of birding. They are small, drab-colored and furtive, rarely lingering long in one spot and even more rarely in a spot where I can see them from car or wheelchair and identify them without optics. Nonetheless I had a pleasant enough time, bundled in blankets in my chair while Darchelle wheeled me up and down the road between the blackberry hedges in which the warbler was reputed to reside. Ed and Delia were out there too so we visited some, which was nice.
We did get one good bird on our list - a White-throated Sparrow. They are the easiest, and arguably the cutest, of the four challenging winter sparrows which we chase every January. Although we get all four almost every year I don't take any of them, even the White-throated, for granted. As Ed would put it, they are 200-level birds. Of the other three, the American Tree is also 200-level while the Swamp and Harris's are usually tougher, though probably not quite 300-level in most years. About like a Palm Warbler.

1/19/2026   Sequim etc  (link to here)
We crammed three birding trips into the past four days, pushing our bird count for the month into the low 120's and elevating us into the top 100 in the state for the first time this year.
Friday we made the pilgrimmage to Port Gamble L+ to pick up the Harris's Sparrow, our second of the four aforementioned winter sparrows. It proved to be easier than I expected so we continued out to Sequim and found the Lesser Black-backed Gull along Schmuck Road L+, just like last year, and a pair of Marbled Murrelets off Marlyn Nelson Park L+. With still more daylight to burn we drove up to Port Townsend to look for the Ancient Murrelets we'd failed to find at Marlyn Nelson and spotted a few groups among the other alcids, mostly murres, commuting north past Point Wilson L+. For me it would be a stretch to call the experience bird watching but with Darchelle's help I was able to see all of our target species well enough to append them to my year list.
Sunday we drove back out to the Snoqualmie Valley to look for the Palm Warbler. Again we did not find it, though Darchelle enjoyed birding with Sarah P and visiting with Tom and Jan O.
Monday we drove out to the coast for the day, first to the Ocean Shores jetty L+ for rockpipers then around the bay to the Westport jetty L+ for the King Eider. Kellie met us in Ocean Shores and we drove the beach together then tracked down the Palm Warbler across from the Coastal Interpretive Center. Our views of all our important targets were definitive but otherwise unsatisfactory. Kellie photographed the warbler, confirming our brief views, and Darchelle identified the other species through the scope. Not great birding but as Eric H once observed, at least we knocked them out for the year.

1/22/2026   ALS Clinic  (link to here)
As we were leaving the ALS Clinic this afternoon I was feeling that I had talked too much and listened too little but Darchelle reminded me that the main point of these clinic visits is to talk. She told me I light up when I'm talking with the medical folks about my problems and difficulties. They seem sympathetic and interested in what I have to say; Darchelle thinks they probably even look forward to my visits.
I actually couldn't think of many questions to ask at the time. I did ask Dr Mayadev, who several years ago had recommended the combination of Clearlax and Pedialax to deal with constipation, for additional advice on that subject but since I'm not even taking half the recommended dose of the Clearlax, she said it might help to increase it when necessary. Or maybe I suggested that. Senna tea now and then might help too. Geanna the dietician asked if we'tried the high calorie Boost after Darchelle expressed concern about my weight. We hadn't, but Darchelle has been giving me the regular stuff more frequently. I tolerate it reasonably well mixed with coffee. My gross weight with chair and ventilator and the customary clothing was 178.6 lbs, about a pound more than I weighed six months ago. I don't want to gain weight but as long as I'm not losing, none of the medical folks seem concerned.
I also asked Dawn the respiratory therapist if increasing the inspiratory pressure on my BIPAP would help with my occasional shortness of breath, and if there was a reason for its current setting of 17 psi. I do not recall a definitive answer to either question, other than perhaps try it and see. They haven't measured my FVC (lung capacity) for several years now because it is too low to detect. I was reminded of that a week or so later when the BIPAP battery went dead in the middle of the night. The five-beep alarm awoke both of us immediately but it took Darchelle a few seconds, maybe as long as a minute, to figure out what was wrong and get it plugged into the wall. I strained mightily to breathe but might as well just relaxed and enjoyed being breathless for all the good my efforts did. I used to think I could make it five minutes but now I think I'd pass out in two. Two minutes of torture is better than five, I guess.
Speaking of dying, Dr Elliott again brought up the subject of DWD. Is it a bad sign when your primary physician and leader of your multidisciplinary care team asks you about Death With Dignity on two successive visits? If I'd had my wits about me I'd have asked him if there was something about the road ahead that I should know about, something which if I knew about in advance, I might choose to die first. I didn't think to ask.
On our way home we drove down along the lakefront L+ behind Husky stadium to look for a Green Heron previously reported in the area. Incredibly, Darchelle spotted it almost immediately. The center photo above pretty well gives my view of the bird but I counted it anyhow.

1/23/2026   Dodd Road  (link to here)
The Great-tailed Grackle behind the gas station and mini-mart on Dodd Road was easier to see than yesterday's Green Heron. We rewarded it with a couple of leftover deep-fried potato wedges but it wasn't very interested. Apparently it prefers peanuts and Chitos.
We continued out past the feedlots and over the hill to the borrow pit where Barn Owls roost and presumably nest in cavities in a bed of what looks like loess - fine-grained orange silt without obvious cross-bedding and not layered like the rhythmite beds around Touchet and farther up the Walla Walla valley. Capping the loess is a thin bed of layered whitish rock which from a distance looks like calcrete, a type of rock described + by geologist Skye Cooley + as a pedogenic deposit of calcium carbonate formed over thousands of years in alluvial soil under arid conditions. Above the calcrete is a surface layer of pale buffy-gray silt, locally 1-2 meters thick, which could be Touchet-type rhythmites or loess, I can't tell from my photos.
Below the loess is a bed of dark gray gravel composed of well-rounded, fist-sized and smaller cobbles. Their color suggests basalt which in turn suggests transport as the bed load of one of the Missoula floods, which traversed and eroded mainly basalt bedrock. FWIW, most other flood gravels, such as those in places along the Snake and Columbia Rivers, seem to contain mostly light-colored cobbles but on our way home I noticed that the I-82 embankments through the city of Yakima appear to be mulched with the same dark gray river rock.
What is the story of this outcrop? Without up close inspection of the several formations which appear here, I am unlikely to get the story right but will give it a shot anyhow. Assuming that the indurated whitish layer actually is calcrete, it would have to have formed prior to the Missoula floods. Since the channeled scablands formed by those floods cut through the Palouse Hills loess and are themselves only thinly covered by subsequent loess deposits, the orange silt in the borrow pit would, if it is loess, also predate the Missoula floods. The underlying river gravel, if it is in fact mostly basalt, could have been left by a flood associated by a glacial period earlier in the Pleistocene, 500Ka or before, which would allow time for deposition of the orange silt and formation of the calcrete in soil above it.
I really wish I could get out there and investigate more closely but since I can't, I guess its time to ask an expert, if I can find one.

1/24/2026   Seeking Walla Walla species  (link to here)
Thanks to Darchelle's research and determination, I added two species to my Walla Walla county list today, boosting my lifetime total to 239. Both were in Bonnie R's back yard. We enjoyed talking with her and Joe while we waited for the White-throated Sparrow and an Anna's Hummingbird to show up outside her living room window. We of course talked mostly about birds, bird sightings and birding trips, experiences we shared in common despite never having met before. We had friends in common too, both through birding and through church. There too we had common experiences and I would have enjoyed exploring those in more depth but we needed to get back to Darchelle's folks so Richard could go to Yakima to visit Roger while we stayed with Donna.
In the afternoon we persuaded Donna to join us on a field trip to Detour and McDonald Roads L+ outside of Lowden to look for American Tree Sparrows. We found (and Darchelle photographed) eight of them in the pastures and roadside weeds along the south side of McDonald Road. I was grateful for her photos in case the righteous birders (who were not the ones who told us about the sparrows - those birders we would describe as gracious) might be tempted to question our count. I think Donna enjoyed the outing; she doesn't get out of the house much and it was a beautiful afternoon.

1/26/2026   Hits and Misses  (link to here)
We drove up to Pasco yesterday morning in our second attempt to see the Slaty-backed Gull which has been spotted regularly roosting on a roof near the river on South 20th Ave L+. We waited at least two hours for the gull to show up but it did not. On the other hand Mike and MerryLynn did show up, along with Bonnie and Joe, and visiting with them tempered our disappointment at missing the gull.
Towards the end of the afternoon we went out again, this time to Juniper Street L+ in response to a fresh report of Bohemian Waxwings. Boheehees, as we affectionately call them, have been hard to come by this winter and these birds were only 15 minutes away. We missed them anyhow, at least Darchelle did. While we were watching dozens, possibly hundreds, of American Robins and Cedar Waxwings visiting the front side of a big juniper tree laden with blue berries, the Bohemians were quietly eating berries on the back side of the tree. We know that because a neighbor photographed them while Darchelle was standing in the street watching. By the time we figured out out where they were, the Boheehees had gone, though not before I happened to hear one calling as it flew over the car.
We returned to the big juniper on Juniper Street L+ first thing this morning. I watched the front of the tree while Darchelle walked around to the back and photographed her Bohemian Waxwing.
On the way home we drove up to Prescott and out Donnelly Road L+, a roller-coaster ride through some of the more scenic stubble fields of the Palouse. Continuing homeward we found ourselves a few miles south of Yakima when it was time for Darchelle's phone appointment. I managed to get us to a secluded spot in an orchard a mile or so off the freeway in time for her to set me up outside in the wheelchair with my audiobook (Pillars of the Earth) while she took her call in the car. A couple of vehicles came by but their occupants couldn't be bothered to stop and bother us. I watched birds L+, including a Merlin, a Kestrel and a flock of 153 Dark-eyed Juncos. I counted each one.

1/30/2026   Red-shouldered Hawk  (link to here)
We drove down to Kent today aound midday and found the Red-shouldered Hawk, as advertised, sitting in a cottonwood tree across from Prologis. We did not find the Black Phoebe along S 204th St, the Swamp Sparrow at Tolt-MacDonald Park or the Great Egret at Sikes Lake. Or any Western Screech Owls on Cougar Mountain.

1/31/2026   January  (link to here)
The January effect+ appears to have boosted the DOW 1.7% and the S&P500 1.4% over the past month but our personal birding January effect did not match last year's stellar performance. My January total of 137 species represented an increase of 37% over December but fell short of last January's count by 21%. We spent all or part of 11 days in the field and submitted 52 complete checklists. We slept all but seven nights in our own bed.

2/05/2026   Swans  (link to here)
The rare swan we sought and missed along Polson Road L+ near Conway yesterday afternoon turned up a half hour closer to home in Arlington today so we went after it again. It turned out that on our way home yesterday we'd driven right by it. Had we known exactly where to look we could have seen it (though not identified it) from the freeway. Armed with updated information this afternon we found the bird, a rare Whooper Swan from Asia, grazing in a green hay field L+ with 150 very similar Trumpeter Swans. A very large white bird in a field full of very large white birds.

2/06/2026   To Walla Walla  (link to here)
On our way over from Seattle we stopped at a patch of recently burned Ponderosa Pine forest along Red Bridge Road in the Teanaway valley east of Cle Elum. The road runs along the edge of valley with new houses scattered in the flat pastures on one side of the road and ramshackle older places nestled in the pines at the foot of the hill on the other side. It was those pines that burned. As fires go it was neither large nor particularly hot. A few patches of the pines were killed but in most areas just the lower trunks were charred leaving most of the crowns green.
The bird we were looking for, a Black-backed Woodpecker, prefers the dead pines. It scales off bits of the charred pine bark leaving telltale orange scars on the blackened trunks. We spotted numerous pines with scaled bark as soon as we drove up but it took us a while to locate the woodpeckers. While we were calling for them a man came over to see what we were doing. He was not much taller than Darchelle with a broad face, a grizzled beard which rippled like windblown grass down over his chin and a quiet voice which I had to strain a bit to hear over the hum of my ventilator. He had grown up in a rambling one-story house with weathered orange pine siding and mismatched metal roofing which we could see between the charred trunks of the nearby trees. He'd lived there for 70 years, he told us, but he would be moving soon. Because of the fire, I wondered to myself, but apparently not because he was moving to nearby Liberty, an old gold-mining town at even higher risk from forest fires.
I asked him about the fire. It was the previous July, he told us, and had probably been started along the side of the road by a man who had never been identified but who had been seen running away when the smoke had started to show. He had lost his barn and a shed to the fire but had nothing but praise for the firefighters who had showed up in time to save his house. When we told him about the woodpeckers he told us he'd seen one a week or so earlier pecking at a burned pine trunk in his yard. That was the bird we were looking for, we told him, and it was good to know that it was still in the area. It turned out they were 100 yards farther down the road. I heard them, Darchelle got photos and we were on our way.
Well almost. Before leaving Wiehl Road L+ we drove up to the end, less than a mile, to see if we could score a third woodpecker - a White-headed. We did not, but we found a little group of curious Pygmy Nuthatches in an open group of pines and Darchelle got some cute photos.
Two hours later we stopped by a garage door company in a light-industrial section of Pasco L+, a location we've visited three other times in the past month. The garage doors aren't the attraction. We were instead interested in the gulls that loaf on the roof. One particular gull actually, a Slaty-backed from Siberia which has been wintering in the Tri-Cities since 2016. Today it was finally at home to greet us, napping with a flock of California and Ring-billed Gulls. We probably won't make the effort to see it again this year, handsome though it is. I'm afraid both the gull and I are approaching our expiration dates but if we're both still around a year from now I hope we'll meet again.
South of Pasco we drove out Dodd Road and turned south along the gravel road along the east side of the Tyson feedlot L+, scanning the ponds and the new poop piles for the Glaucous Gull the Denny's and others had reported earlier in the week. Finding no gulls, we continued down the road until it dead-ended at some kind of utility station enclosed by a chain link fence. A two-track continued into the weeds so we followed that across the valley and up onto a ridge where a two lane paved road led us to another utility station. It looked like the kind of place to which birdwatchers and other members of the public are not invited but it offered a good overview of the area around the original poop piles as well as the big roof where gulls hang out. Up the hill from us along the south edge of the feedlot the birds, mostly starlings were restless and after a few minutes rose up all together in a murmuration which though less dramatic than some we've seen was still impressive. Photos revealed the reason, a Merlin.

2/07/2026   Walla Walla  (link to here)
Richard went to church in the morning while Darchelle and I stayed home with Donna then we all went over to Sally's for lunch. The cuisine was Greek - several salads, felafel, french fries(!), rice and homemade bread by Heather and for dessert, Baklava by Gracie and chocolate cake by Katie. I particularly enjoyed the Baklava.
After lunch Darchelle and I drove up Lewis Peak Road almost to the end of the right fork. Though we found a few inches of patchy old snow in places, the road tread was bare all the way. No owls.

2/09/2026   Flat Tire  (link to here)
We were passing a pickup + horse trailer combo at 75 mph on hwy 240 about twenty miles north of Richland when the car suddenly felt a little unstable. We'd just made it back into our lane when the green flat tire symbol flashed on. We pulled over onto the paved shoulder and the horse trailer, then the semi behind it, roared past. In the silence that followed Darchelle got out to check and found the problem. The left front tire was flat. We could hardly believe it. One of our rugged almost-new All Terrain tires was actually flat!
Darchelle could have changed the tire but we couldn't get far enough off the road for her to safely work on it so she got on her phone and looked up "roadside assistance".

2/14/2026   Yard birds  (link to here)
About a month after I posted these photos as I was preparing to write about them, I checked last quarter's journal and came across a similar "Yard birds" entry from last December. The adult Sharp-shinned Hawk is almost certainly the same individual; they aren't that common and the white spots on the back line up pretty well. The crow is one of several which have been frequenting our yard since Darchelle began sprinkling mini-dog kibble on the patio table every morning. In another month, the two pairs will fight fiercely for ownership of the table and its treats but for now, all four scarf down the kibble together. The towhee, like me, is the resident male, the difference between us being that the towhee is better-looking.
Also in last quarter's journal, I wrote at length (relatively speaking) about our back yard juncos. On the 23rd of November and again on 21 December I discuss Cassiar and Slate-colored Juncos with photos showing the range of plumage variation in the Cassiars. My purpose was to clarify in my own mind the difference between the two subspecies rather than to edify you, my gentle reader (yes, I watched Bridgerton last night). Anyhow, last fall I concluded that our apparent Slate-colored individual was actually a Cassiar, but in the last few days, a real Slate-colored Junco appears to have joined our back yard L+ flock. Pictured above, it has no trace of a hood and the line between chest and flanks is a smooth downward curve. The tinge of brown on the back suggests that it is a female. The rounded tips of the white outer tail feathers and the uniform gray color and condition of the primary and greater coverts indicate an adult bird. The contrast between the faded brown primaries and the fresh gray secondaries is apparently not useful in aging juncos. Since this bird is an adult and migratory birds often return to the same location in successive winters, I had hoped to find photos of this bird from the winter of 24-25 but our limited selection of photos was inconclusive.

2/18/2026   Waterville Plateau  (link to here)
Snoqualmie Pass was bare and dry with barely a foot of snowpack on the ledges along the road, including the two inches of new snow on the trees. From Easton east to Ryegrass Summit the ground was bare and the sky blue with fluffy gray-bottomed cumulus clouds. We looked for an Eared Grebe and called for Chukars at Vantage and searched for Eared Grebes among the Ruddy Ducks on ice-free Soap Lake but didn't pick up our first new bird until we started up the hill to the Dry Falls overlook. A Chukar was calling up on the rim of the breached anticline above the road. They've been hard to find in their usual Okanogan County hangouts so we were pleased to hear it.
Our next new bird was a Prairie Falcon, probably two of them we think, on rockpiles north of Atkins Lake. The lake was dry and according to a local guy we talked to up north on H Road and 16 NE, the two inches of snow on the ground is the most they've had all winter. He hadn't seen any Snowy Owls, nor had we after searching Roads M, 2, 1 and L around Atkins Lake for the previous hour.
Darchelle had been scoping a couple of raptors off to the west when the guy pulled up. One was bulky and brown with pale spots on the back. The other was similar in size but more sleek with unmarked dark gray upperparts - maybe a Gyr! We drove over there, flushing a couple of Gray Partridge on the way, but when we reached G Road we could find only the Red-tail and a Rough-leg.
On our way to the Inn at Gamble Sands for the night, $131 including tax, we detoured out to Bridgeport State Park and called up a couple of Saw-Whet Owls, our fourth new tick of the day.

2/19/2026   Waterville Snowy Owl  (link to here)
We left the Gamble Sands at 7:30AM, an early start for us. I saved twenty minutes by not using the toilet, gambling that I could put it off until evening, and would have been fine had I not further postponed pooping until after we went owling. I was pretty uncomfortable the last three hours and enjoyed our fruitless attempt to find our first Okanogan County Western Screech Owl even less than I do our usual owl outings.
By getting up onto the Plateau early this morning, we hoped to spot Greater Sage Grouse displaying before they retired for the day but we didn't know exactly where to look for the lek. We scanned the stubble around last year's lek but no grouse were present. A stiff breeze from the north was sweeping skeins of snow down the road ahead of us and we wondered if perhaps the wind had discouraged the birds, or maybe we were just too late. Darchelle texted Shep, who had seen the birds four days earlier and reported them on Tweeters, for details but didn't hear back in time so we consoled ourselves with the thought that we could try again on Sunday.
We spent the rest of our day up on the plateau in a different sort of owl pursuit. We drove about 50 miles on mostly unpaved back roads through wheat and canola stubble, weedy grassland and remnant patches of sagebrush, stopping frequently so Darchelle could scan with binoculars or spotting scope for a roosting Snowy Owl. We heard that it was in the area a few days ago but it may have left because we could not find it despite systematically searching 20 or so square miles northeast of Mansfield and casually surveying additional areas southeast and north of town. Darchelle enjoys that sort of birding more than I do but the desolate landscape of faded yellows and brown with its sparse cover of windblown snow holds some appeal, at least for Horned Larks. We saw numerous flocks of 100 or more, mostly in the stubble fields.
Our best birds of the day were Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs, both associating with large flocks of Horned Larks. Neither species offered photo ops though Darchelle did get Merlin recordings of the longspurs.
We left the Plateau by mid-afternoon and after quick stops at Washburn Island and Monse for a few waterfowl, drove theCameron Lakes Road L+. There wasn't much snow but the lakes were all frozen. Birds were scarce.

2/20/2026   Havillah  (link to here)
After a late start we spent much of the available daylight on Siwash Creek and North Siwash Creek Roads, stopping frequently to stir up the small forest birds with calls of Northern Pygmy Owl and White-winged Crossbills with an occasional interlude of mobbing Black-capped Chickadees. We saw lots of Crossbills (but none that we could identify as White-winged) and three different Pygmy Owls. Of the little birds, several were new for the year but we failed to find the winter finches - Redpolls, Rosy-finches and the crossbills - for which the Highlands are famous. We didn't find any grouse either, but they are tough when there isn't much snow. Even at the Havillah Sno-Park (3900') the snow was less than six inches deep, including a couple inches from a day or three ago.
The Sno-Park lot was quiet, though I happened to be looking when a blue-gray adult American Goshawk sailed through an opening in the trees and disappeared. It's wings fixed in a fast glide, the heavy bird was visible for maybe half a second. I directed Darchelle on a short stroll into the woods where I thought it might have paused on a perch but it was characteristically gone. On our way back out to Havillah Road we stopped to call another Pygmy Owl and while it was calling back, Todd drove up and stopped to ask if we'd seen any birds. He recognized us, he realized, when we got to talking about the Great Gray Owl we'd seen at that spot three years ago. He invited us to stop by his house, the first one on the left on North Siwash Creek Road, sometime, then continued up to the Sno-Park for a ski tour before dark.

2/21/2026   Highlands redux  (link to here)
I described our birding achievements today in an email reply to Ed and Delia this evening. We did have a good time today. We found lots of Pine Siskins and Red Crossbills on Swainson's Mill Road L+ below Havillah, then drove over the hill to Molson L+ via Davies Road L+ where we bumped into the Ruffie. The snow along Davies Road (4400'), while probably twice as deep as over at Havillah, still wasn't enough to bury a grouse. Or a Coyote. We saw more Coyotes in the Highlands on this trip than we have on any other. Perhaps the local ranchers have stopped shooting at them (not likely) or maybe the lower snowpack is allowing them to winter higher up in the hills than usual.
We took Mary Ann Creek Road L+ down to Chesaw (3000') then drove north on Bolster Road towards Canada. Khanh had suggested we might find Common Redpolls in the alders along Bolster Road L+, but we didn't even find the much more common Pine Siskins in those, or any other, alders; the Siskins were all in larches and the cone-laden crowns of the spruce trees.
The drive on snow-covered FR 3575 L+ over the mountains to Toroda Creek was close as Darchelle and I get to cross-country skiing. At 4300' the high point on FR 3575 is slightly lower than Davies Road and about 400' higher than the Sno-Park but the forest seemed drier than either of those locations, with less spruce and more Douglas Fir. I was pleased that Darchelle got to see a Goshawk of her own. I was also relieved when we got down to Toroda Creek Road and back to civilization, where a breakdown probably wouldn't be fatal.

2/22/2026   Big Birds  (link to here)
We checked out (figuratively speaking, since you apparently don't have to stop by the front desk anymore) of the Omak Best Western at 7AM as the edges of the clouds overhead were turning pink. For $500 we'd spent three comfortable nights in a second-floor room with a bed that felt much like ours at home. The toilet was a bit low and tight but we managed well enough. After the first morning we passed on the breakfast; they'd had bacon, which I liked but it had tasted like cleaning fluid, which I didn't like. The coffee from the machine downstairs was OK but not as good as our two-day-old leftovers from home. The chili rellenos from the Mexican restaurant on the corner were more mediocre than I remembered.
What a treat to be out early! The morning sun illuminated snow-covered hills and snow-free benches alike above the Okanogan River as we drove south towards Brewster and the Waterville Plateau. I persuaded Darchelle to stop for five minutes at the Monse Bridge L+ to try for the Swamp Sparrow again. The north wind had packed the little cove at the boat launch with slush which had congealed into rugose blue-green ice, no doubt still too thin to walk on though I would certainly have tested it back in the day. I don't think Darchelle was tempted. Despite the chill the birds were singing vigorously - Red-winged Blackbirds, a Bewick's Wren, American Robins and Song Sparrows. She contributed a few Swamp Sparrow chips to the chorus and the bird we sought called back, not very loud but clear enough for Merlin to pick it up and us to identify it.
The Plateau was quiet, the bird activity subdued perhaps by the sombre sheet of gray stratus encroaching on the bright sky overhead. Clean white drifts like teeth bit into the gravel bed of the road before us but whatever snow had fallen in the past two days had done nothing for the snowpack; the stubble fields were still half bare. At the old lek we saw no birds but a half mile down the road we spotted two dark tumbleweeds 150 yards out in the wheat stubble. They were not tumbleweeds but big birds. They were Sage Grouse!
Darchelle watched them huff around for a few minutes then repositioned the car and held binoculars for me so I could see them too. With his dark tail splayed in a spiky halo, the male grouse thrusts his yellow air sacs like oversized breasts out from under the fluffy white cape draped around his neck and chest, pauses as if to assess the response of his audience then does it again. Female grouse, like male humans, apparently find breasts of the opposite sex exciting, perhaps even beautiful. Not all were displaying but we counted five males in the area before we left to look for the next big thing - a Snowy Owl.
Although not optimistic about our chances, I was willing to invest a couple of hours in what would probably be our final Snowy Owl search of the year. I told Darchelle I wanted to be heading off the Plateau by 11. She spotted our 2026 Snowy Owl 250 yards out in a frozen field of green wheat at 11:01. "I've got one", she quietly announced. "You're shittin' me" I replied. I felt as though I was channeling my friend Donna's not quite ex-husband Wayne - it's a phrase that often pops up in his stories and I could almost hear his Maine accent as I said it. But Darchelle wasn't shittin' me. She turned the car so I could see the big bird, as round and white as a melting snowman out in its field, then we spent the next 40 minutes getting photos, pinpointing its location and sharing the news. Here's our checklist L+.
We drove off the Plateau via US 2 West with a stop at Moses Coulee to look for Gray-crowned Rosy Finches in the cliffs on the way up to Jameson Lake L+. The only birds we saw around the cliffs were Rock Pigeons. The lake was partly frozen and both the ice and the open water were the color of blood, courtesy of an algae bloom which according to one report, may be associated with the spring lake turnover.
Leaving Moses Coulee we stopped up near the west rim because I thought the birds I saw fly up from from the side of the road might have been Rosy-Finches. When Darchelle went to look for them she flushed a couple of Gray Partridge, only our second sighting of the trip. She couldn't find any Rosy-Finches but did see a Horned Lark where the maybe-finches had been. We stopped again coming into Waterville to photograph a Northern Harrier on a post, and yet again in town for a Merlin, and then a Sharpie. In Leavenworth on the private road across Icicle Creek from the boat launch (which was gated) Darchelle called up a White-headed Woodpecker, our last new year bird of the trip. The water in Icicle Creek was green and so clear that I dreamed about it that night.
On Stevens Pass the sagging snowpack had the same sodden look as at Snoqualmie Pass but was, at two feet, twice as deep.

2/26/2026   Glaucous Gull  (link to here)
I had some reservations about this bird when it was first reported about two weeks ago just east of Sumas along the Canadian border. The iris seemed too dark and the tip of the bill not dark enough for a 2W Glaucous Gull so when none of the sightings were approved in eBird, we decided not to chase it, despite Glaucous Gull being high on our list of priorities for the year. To me, the bird looked like the "White Gull" that we saw in Burlington five years ago, which I see has now quietly morphed back into a bona fide Glaucous Gull, at least on some checklists. Anyhow yesterday I noticed that the Sumas gull sightings had all been approved so this afternoon we made the pilgrimmage ourselves. We were just in time; it flew off five minutes after we spotted it.

2/28/2026   Stats  (link to here)
During February we spent all or part of 10 days in the field, submitted 63 complete checklists (115 ytd) and saw or heard 124 species. Of those 45 were new for our our Washington 2026 list giving us a total of 185 for the year to date, 12 short of our tally one year ago. We slept eight nights away from home.

3/01/2026   Walla Walla  (link to here)
Despite staying up past midnight we arose at sunrise and left the house 15 minutes later to look for a Northern Mockingbird discovered two days ago in a mobile home park four miles away. It was still hanging out where it was first seen, and looking quite at home.
With two hours to burn we drove over to Byrnes Road L+ near Touchet (pronounced Toochee) and found lots of Red-tailed Hawks. We also found a Prairie Falcon, a bird which like the Northern Mockingbird, we've only seen three times in the past six years in Walla Walla County.
From Byrne's Road we drove up Nine Mile Canyon L+ to see if the Ferruginous Hawk which nests in the canyon had returned from its winter vacation. It had; I didn't see it because without neck muscles I can't tip my head back to look up at the sky but Darchelle got a few photos. We initially dismissed it as a Red-tail because of the heavily-marked wings and pale orange tail. Even Merlin thought it might be a Red-tail. After examining the photos we recognized it as a Ferruginous by the unmarked white belly, the absence of dark patagial marks and the dark rust-colored legs. Also suggesting Ferruginous are the pale windows near the wingtips formed by P3-7, the gray face and the pale throat.
The next morning we returned to Nine Mile Canyon L+ so I could try to get the Ferruginous Hawk, and to look for the Loggerhead Shrike which shows up in the canyon around the end of February. I saw the Ferruginous but the shrike we found in the canyon, about two miles up, was not the Loggerhead but a Northern.

3/04/2026   Visiting  (link to here)
Our first two mornings we went out birding early since Donna had Lupe and Jenn respectively coming in to get her up and ready for the day. Both times we found ourselves at Nine Mile Canyon where both times we missed the Loggerhead Shrike. The rest of the day I generally spent hanging out in my wheelchair by the living room windows using my eye-gaze laptop to read books and write an email or two. On our third day Darchelle helped our nieces redesign their bedroom and discovered that our (relatively) new Subaru was leaking oil. The oil leak helped us to decide to stay an extra day and Les Schwab helped us to decide what to do about it - remove the extra washer/gasket from the oil drain plug. Staying an extra day also meant we were on hand to help celebrate Sally's birthday.

3/05/2026   The Gorge  (link to here)
Back on the road again this morning after four days and five nights with Darchelle's family in Walla Walla. The weather was sunny after the morning overcast drifted off to the east and temperatures were in the mid-50s as we drove east through the Gorge, though a brisk southwesterly breeze swept whitecaps upriver all afternoon. A blanket of fluffy stratocumulus pushed up against the crest and curled around the peak of Mount Hood, dragging curtains of rain almost to Stevenson but without much conviction. When we reached the Best Western Plus in Camas, the pavement was wet but the clouds had broken up.
Leaving Walla Walla we stopped by Nine Mile Canyon and again found a Northern Shrike instead of the Loggerhead. Continuing up to Tri-Cities to look for a Black-crowned Night Heron, a tick I did not want to leave without, we tried Riverview Park L+, which we had had known as the Animal Shelter pond when we looked for Night Herons there a few years ago. Darchelle scoped the shoreline cattails and willow thickets from the access road for about 15 minutes before she spotted four of the herons at the far (north) end of the pond. I was able to pick them out with the opera glasses once she told me where to look. I was pleased to get them; they may well be the only ones I see all year.
We considered heading home but decided instead to try for a couple of birds reported in the Columbia Gorge then stay at the Best Western in Camas so we could visit Ridgefield NWR in the morning. Darchelle particularly likes Ridgefield but if we go there from home we don't usually get there until early afternoon. We took SR 14 all the way through the gorge, a nice change from our usual route west on I-84 from Hermiston to Hood River on the Oregon side. We stopped in Roosevelt L+ in Klickitat County and I sat in the car for an hour while Darchelle searched through a flock of close to 1000 ducks looking for a Tufted Duck. She didn't find one but several of the other ducks were new for our Klickitat County list.
Just west of Lyle we took old Highway 8 to Balch Road L+ to look for our next two birds - Acorn and Lewis's Woodpeckers. We found both almost immediately. While we were parked in the middle of the road a white pickup came down the hill and paused for us got out of his way. When he stopped next to us we thought he was going to scold us but instead he asked what we were looking at. "Birds", Darchelle told him. "This is our favorite spot for Lewis's and Acorn Woodpeckers, she explained. He already knew about the woodpeckers. "My mother is a birdwatcher", he told us. "You might know her - Ann Marie W?" We do know her; she has done pelagic trips with us and we've run into her in the field multiple times. The man in the pickup was her son Glen. We had known that Ann Marie had cancer; Glen told us that she was nearing the end, no longer eating but just taking water, and that he was heading up to see her. Before he left he invited us to stop by and visit him sometime, and also that there was an Acorn Woodpecker up the right fork of the "Y" beyond the lake. We looked for that one and heard it but by that point had already seen one in the oaks at the crest of the hill, just before the schoolhouse.
A few miles down the road we ran into flowers, a showy display of Douglas Grass-widows growing in the thin soil of basalt outcrops near the Catherine Creek trailhead. Their pink and magenta blooms were catching the afternoon light, nodding in the breeze against a rich emerald backdrop of spring grass and moss. "They would make stunning photos for the journal", I thought, then immediately felt sad, or maybe hopeless, as if there were no point in stopping, no point in attempting to capture their beauty, to learn their name and research their place in the pine-oak woodland and meadow community of the central gorge.
But I did ask Darchelle to stop and take a few photos, an act of hope on my part and help on hers. I would have liked to get photos of the half dozen other flowers blooming in crevices in the basalt roadcuts we passed in the next mile or so but there was no place to stop and I had already blown my wad of courage, or hope, or whatever it is that keeps me spitting in the face of this disease, so I didn't ask.

3/06/2026   Ridgefield  (link to here)
The Best Western in Camas was cheaper but less inviting than I remembered from a year ago. The toilet was a little low and the bed a little high but we slept well enough. Remembering the bacon from Omak I passed on breakfast, but remembering my bloating all day yesterday after not taking the time to poop in the morning, I didn't pass on the toilet before we left for Ridgefield.
We spent most of the day driving around the refuge and accumulated a list of over 60 species L+. It rained all day but often barely more than mist in the air, enough to deter most of the other birders but not enough to shut down the birds. Darchelle was concerned that I didn't enjoy the birding much but I told her I had a pretty good time. Both physically and emotionally I was more comfortable than yesterday so that helped. I only missed one bird, a Hermit Thrush along the entrance road which I couldn't hear, and most of the others I was at least able to identify on my own, that is, without optics.
Monica and Marc brought us sopas dressed with black beans, nopales, Cotija cheese and jalapeño salsa for supper. Darchelle had to remove most of the salsa, tasty though it was, from mine.

3/07/2026   Home  (link to here)
Home again for the first time in a week, we slept in, brewed up some of the coffee Alicia brought back from Thailand (light but not acidic, fairly fragrant), refilled the feeders then watched birds in the back yard for a couple of hours while I worked on a leftover Sopa and a dense honey-pastry from the Patisserie in Walla Walla. Some of the regular birds were missing - the Towhees, Bewick's Wrens and Flickers - and numbers of the others were reduced. Spring has progressed. Some of the Magnolia buds have shed their shells exposing petals still tightly furled in fat pink spikes. Tiny gray-green leaves shade the Snowberry. No pussy willows (willow pussies?); the willow died of blight last summer and isn't coming back. I outlived it! Yaay.

3/08/2026   Breathing  (link to here)
Usually I can drink coffee in the evening with little effect but a caffeinated mocha I downed late yesterday in order to boost my calorie intake kept me awake most of the night. Perhaps as a consequence, I've been a little short of breath most of the day, which means that I inhale and exhale about thirty times per minute. The ventilator responds to my pacing, providing extra pressure (17 psi) when I inhale and slacking off to 4 psi when I begin to exhale. Thirty breaths per minute triggers an alarm on the ventilator, and while I'm accustomed to it beeping at me, the sound is nonetheless a reminder that my days are numbered. "We're all going to die some day", you might be tempted to say. Don't waste your breath. I take no comfort in that thought and you don't believe it anyhow, No one does, until they have to. But the beeping of my ventilator reminds me that death by "respiratory insufficiency" awaits me, soon.
Years ago when our cat was dying, she disappeared, and after searching the house I found her lying on a heating duct in the basement. She had crawled up there to die when the effort of interacting with her humans became too much. I'm starting to feel the same way. ALS distorts my voice and steals my breath, and I enjoy neither the sound I produce nor the effort required to produce it. Visiting isn't much fun anymore. But is it time to say goodbye just yet, I don't know.

3/11/2026   Company  (link to here)
David S, a close friend from college, stopped in Seattle on his way home to Denver from the Philippines and Japan and spent a couple of days with us. The weather was wet so we didn't go out birding or sightseeing; instead we mostly sat in the kitchen and jungle room, drank coffee and talked. We talked about our kids of course. David had just returned from a week-long ecotourism trip with his son James. Hosted by Tao +, they traveled by small boat through the islands at north end of Palawan in the Philippines, visiting reefs and beaches, staying in bamboo shelters and dining on local Philippino cuisine.
We dined on farmed Atlantic salmon which David picked up at Whole Foods, smothered in chopped sweet onion and baked for 25 minutes. It was tender and flavorful, richer than any Pacific salmon I've had, and I enjoyed the leftovers for the next three nights remembering David gratefully with every bite. The green beans he steamed after sprinkling them with dried tarragon. They were delicious too.

3/12/2026   Air hunger  (link to here)
I had the opportunity to experience it first hand yesterday morning, when we were trying to fix my headgear and got the hoses mixed up. Not for long - it probably wasn't even thirty seconds that I went without, but it's not like holding your breath. My lungs were not full but empty and there was nothing I could do. No air means no voice so I couldn't even express my distress. Panic took over. Darchelle got the mouthpiece hose hooked up and even gasping on that, I couldn't suck in enough air. I broke out in a sweat all over, then as I began to get some air through the mouthpiece, I began to calm myself down. After a few minutes, with the old headgear hooked up, I could even begin to talk again.
For the rest of the day I couldn't forget that desperate feeling of not having any air. It would pop up now and then - during conversation, while eating, during transfers when Darchelle takes off my headgear for a few seconds. Even breathing at a normal pace - 12 to 15 breaths per minute - I felt just a little short of breath but at that point, I recognized it as anxiety. When I really need air my breathing ramps up to 30 or more. This evening, after a nap and a quiet afternoon at home just the two of us, I'm starting to feel normal again.

3/23/2026   Geology  (link to here)
I have a new project - learning and writing about the geologic history of Washington. As I learn I write, and as I lie in bed in the morning (Darchelle tends to need to sleep in a little longer than I do), I go over what I've learned and decide what to investigate next. I've been at it for about a week now and have mostly covered the past five million years, which is about 2% of the geological timeframe applicable to the state. Just 49 weeks to go...though that isn't really the case because the amount of information available on the last five million years is probably about the same as that pertaining to the first 200 million. I wish I had started this project 20 years ago, when I was out in the field collecting rocks and could have done some of my own investigating. But I didn't, so now I do as best I can from my wheelchair and the Internet.