October 30th - November Trip, Day Two

Spring Creek Fish Hatchery

Near the mouth of the White Salmon River

I was up good and early at the Society Hotel in Bingen, got dressed, and got some breakfast when the cafe opened at 7. After a half-windy half-day in Skamania the day before, I made the Spring Creek Fish Hatchery my first stop. The wind had not seemed to get quite so funneled here, so I had hopes of finding some of the birds on my dwindling needs list. What did I expect to find? 

White-throated Sparrow, White-breasted Nuthatch - seen on a recent visit. 

Sharp-shinned Hawk - seen on a recent visit, but not the kind of bird I would ever "count" on. They are perfectly capable of staying hunkered down in a tree, out of sight, even if a mob of crows comes in to protest. 

Herring Gull - Please? Bonaparte's Gull - maybe??

Red-necked Grebe, Surf Scoter, Pacific Loon - outside shots. These might normally be in the county by now, but an East wind does not work to push these birds in the right direction. 

Um. . . I don't know. Lewis's Woodpecker?? I think I had these in my head, as one had spent some time here in a past winter. 

Distant Mutt Gull

I pulled in, and immediately got on a gull out on the water. It teased me from several different angles into thinking it had dark primary tips, but it turned out to be a hybrid gull. I pulled in immediately as the main drive started to become a little more lined with trees and brambles. Things got off to an encouraging start! Spotted Towhees, Dark-eyed Juncos, Golden-crowned Sparrows, California Scrub-Jays, Song Sparrows, and even a Fox Sparrow came out into plain view on the side of the road. The air was calm, the sky was clear, and it just felt like it was going to be a good day of birding. Some Varied Thrushes "tshcup tschup"ped from the trees ahead, and I felt even more certain about this. 

Good signs

I started to do the drive a little stop a little plan but decided no. I was certain I'd miss birds that way. I drove to the far end of the hatchery, got out, and began a focused exploration. I even made a decision to photograph as many birds as possible along the way. I figured anything to slow me down would increase the odds that I would find every dang bird in the park. 

I definitely have visits that are a little less careful - often on days where I may have multiple stops to make and a wide range of habitat to cover. But this was the time to slowbird for sure.

Common Mergansers

Early on, it was American Robins and a Downy Woodpecker that had my attention. 

Some flyovers included Great Blue Heron, Common Raven, and Bald Eagle.

Common Raven, bottom left; Bald Eagle, top right

Great Blue Heron

And then I had a chance to see some of the Varied Thrushes that had been calling gently from the trees.

Varied Thrush. My favorite bird <3

And some of the sparrows that I'd usually pass by: Dark-eyed Junco and Spotted Towhee:

Some birds simply didn't show themselves - Lesser Goldfinches were a surprise, calling with their distinctive "Tweeyou!" calls. Northern Flicker was definitely not a surprise, although they stayed surprisingly out of view throughout the morning. I also heard a bird that I had no hope of seeing from the hatchery - Canyon Wren! (148 for the year!). 

The bird called from the hillsides above the hatchery with its distinctive "jeet... jeet... jeet" call. Just enough times to grab my attention, stopping as I'd try to record it, and starting up a few minutes later after the phone was away. I was confused on these birds for much of the year. I thought they'd been recorded here, but then thought maybe I'd mixed up my Fish Hatcheries, as they were recorded during the year from Little White Salmon. As it turns out, they have been recorded from *both* locations! This is a bird I could easily have missed, had I not decided to slow things down this morning. 

I haven't seen many Golden Eagles. . . Just enough to get excited about this bird, because of the placement of those white patches under the wing. But I've come to believe that all of that other white sprinkled around the undersides of this bird make it a juvenile Bald Eagle. The white and black on the tail is the right kind of arrangement for a Golden Eagle - in a very general sense, but the black here is too thin, and too messy. Bald Eagle.

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Quiet mornings seem to be a good set up for finding woodpeckers. I followed the tapping to a tree and found this Red-breasted Sapsucker hard at work. I also heard, but never got shots of, several chickadees. There were some that clearly sounded like Black-capped, while others skirted the line between Chestnut-backed, Mountain, or even just. . . juvenile hoarse Black-capped. None ended up being close enough to even view in binoculars. An Anna's Hummingbird also evaded my binocs.

Some other little birds did cooperate: 

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Golden-crowned Kinglet; /the Ruby-crowned Kinglets were visible, but caffeinated as always

And then the silence paid off once more! A White-throated Sparrow sang from a side path. I followed it off of the main road and came across a thick pile of zono sparrows - all Golden-crowned that I could see, but also a little backlit as I found them East of me in the morning sun. I walked slowly towards them. . . and they flew across the little retention pond. I continued. . . turned. . . waited. . . and some slowly flew back in. I studied them again but could not find the White-throated in the bunch. But more of the birds were back up near the main road where I had started, so I returned and pished. 

I got a nice view of the White-throated's head - the white and yellow lores being a feature unique to them. The bird dipped down, and I got my camera out to try for a shot of bird number 149 for my Skamania year.

And the guy with the off-leash dog arrived, flushing the sparrows to remote locations. 

It's not a stretch to say that most of the people reading this are birders. Not all, but most. And I know y'all. Some of you are pretty patient with things like this, but many of you are not. An even smaller portion of you would even take the opportunity to say something snippy. I said *many* of these things in my head, but the man instantly defused the situation.

"I bet we're looking at the same thing!" he told me beaming. 

"Oh. . . ?" I asked, a little intrigued.

"The egret over there! Right?"

Great Egret

So. . . this is pretty much my favorite thing that has happened this year. Well played Egrets. Well played indeed. 

We chatted for a bit about them, and quite honestly, they're not as common here as other places I've visited during the year. Yeah, a pic of that sparrow would have been nice, but birds fly, man. Birds fly. They continued on, and so! Did I.

149. Hm. . . I also had to look at the time. You see, I had signed up for a wine club membership with Willow Wines very early in the year. I had a few bottles to pick up and had told the owner that I'd arrive around 10. My watch told me that I was about 15 minutes late for that, so I turned and started hustling back towards the car. 

About halfway back, a call from right over my head stopped me: 

White-breasted Nuthatch! Bird 150 for my Skamania year. Mission accomplished!

This was a happy find. I really had some doubts going into the day, so this really felt good to have bagged this bird. I enjoyed it for a half a minute more, and then *really* got hustling back to my car. 

Cook-Underwood Road and thereabouts

I made it up in the vicinity of 10:30-10:45, and picked up my wine, thanking Brendan for providing the bookends for the year. It was a close thing that I was even able to pick up the wine! During the summer, fires had hit this area, and had nearly gotten to their home. He expressed a lot of thankfulness for the work of local fire teams.

I returned East on Cook-Underwood Road, pulling off at that one beautiful wide pull-off.

Spring Creek Fish Hatchery from far above.

From here, I watched as a Cooper's Hawk sparred with a Common Raven. This went on for quite a while! It allowed for some nice pics to aid in identification, although the biggest one was again - the position of the head, and the bend (or lack thereof) at the fore of the wings.

Although I did briefly have hopes that this was a Sharpie! I was snapping pictures and looking at them on my viewfinder, and this one had me briefly excited that I might have bird 151: 

But even in this one, where the angle makes the arms look a little more pushed forward, the head seems to be pretty big. I was comfortable with Cooper's Hawk, given the image above!

I did want to make one more birding stop in the area - Little Buck Creek Road. One of the birds on my radar was. . . Western Bluebird?? There'd been a sighting from this time of year several years back, so I thought I'd give it a try. I birded windows down, enjoying the crisp fall air, and listening for birds. I first heard the "few few" of the bluebirds when I arrived at a large powerline cut.

The calls were distinctive enough, but I wanted to get pictures. I was also increasingly curious as I walked into the clearcut - there seemed to be a pretty big batch of bluebirds here! Finally, I got a semi-crappy photo of one of the birds. 

Western Bluebird - 151!

In the end, I counted ten of these birds, and enjoyed watching them work the open space before finally deciding that they'd had enough of me. 

Little White Salmon Fish Hatchery

This spot was also on the not-so-windy end of the county and has some good duck duck gull potential. I made a stop, and found some good birds: Barrow's Goldeneye, American Dipper, Western Gull, and a mess of Common Mergansers. 

Fish!

Stevenson

Now I was just hungry. I continued West to Stevenson and tried to enter the Walking Man Brewpub for the second time this year. It was closed for the second time this year, and I instead ended up going to the adjacent gift shop, Traverse PNW market. 

For my ex and my daughter, I picked up some gifts, (wine and a notebook respectively), and I had fun chatting with the two women in the shop (both employees? I guess I wasn't sure!). But I chatted with them about the year I'd been doing; Additionally, we got talking about the weather. I had a moment in the conversation that made me finally feel like a bona fide Skamania birdwatcher: 

"When the wind is blowing from the West like today. .  " the woman behind the counter started. I think many months ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you which way the wind was blowing, just that it was windy! But she corrected herself without any comment from me. Still, it felt like something had stuck. . . maybe only temporarily, but it stuck onto my Teflon brain. 

Apparently, the variability in wind that I had experienced is not only an East/West thing. The other woman was describing how she had just been up in "The Gifford Pin" foraging for mushrooms, and it had been not windy at all. The two of them, Stevenson residents and nearly neighbors, would even experience days where the wind at one person's home was different than the wind at the other's! I packed this information away, and decided I would try to hit areas upslope for owls the next morning. 

Red Bluff tap house was lunch. Oh my lord, the burger. . . jalapeno slices, cream cheese, bacon jam. Good lord, typing about it now and I almost want to hop back in the car! This stop gave me a chance to see if any more birds had popped up on my needs alert. 

Sharp-shinned Hawk - Spring Creek Fish Hatchery. Doesn't that just figure? I'd picked up 32 species on my walk, and one of the locals, and *outstanding* birder, came through and found 33 species basically right after I had departed! Nothing else was screaming at me to hop in the car and drive, so I strolled around town a little. I tried the drug store for a mug, but the Stevenson mugs. . . they just had that feel, like there was a factory somewhere cranking out the Stevenson mugs, then changing the name to Cle Elum. . . or Republic. I'm hoping to get one for 50 cents at a thrift store, ideally, emblazoned with the name of some local business. 

I went to the Rock Creek Pond in town, looked at the water, went back to my car, tipped the seat back and woke up ten minutes later. I was done birding for the day!

Returning to Bingen, I sat and sorted through pictures, working out plans for the next morning. I eventually got around to looking at the events page for Everybody's Brewing. They had live music going on, and I realized that I'd almost missed it! I hopped in the car and made it up to see the second half of the set from Megan Alder, a regular at their Live Music Mondays. 

That, a sampling of brews, and a Greek salad with some additional protein. That set me just right for the evening. I returned to the Society House, took advantage of the complimentary soak, and turned in for the night. 

Day 29 complete! This... feels doable.