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Tag Archives: birding

Looking for Winter Birds

Jenny and I went in search of wintering birds in eastern Okanogan County yesterday. It was a long day of driving over bumpy, sometimes muddy and puddle-filled roads, avoiding cows – lots of cows – and enjoying long vistas. The weather was very non-typical of early December. Normally we’d be battling cold winds, crusty snow on the ground, fog, rain or snow falling. Or maybe, all of the above. Instead, we had mostly blue skies, bare ground, and green fields of verdant winter wheat dotted with glacial erratics from the last ice age. In other words, it was a great day to see birds! The birds did not get the memo. They were few and far between and while we saw interesting species like Snow Buntings and Common Redpolls, Northern Shrikes and Rough-legged Hawks, we missed out on the iconic Snowy Owls and Gyrfalcons. Still, it was a good day with good company to explore a fascinating landscape.

 

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A glacial erratic splitting in two

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We walked all around this stand of aspens and found one Great-horned Owl and some chickadees

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An interesting mark left by someone before us

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Old scratches in aspen bark

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A bird’s nest at eye level

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Jenny found this. She identified it as a praying mantis egg case. Pretty cool!

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Lots of cows means lots of cow pies to avoid. Some had mushrooms growing out of them.

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A suvey marker.

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A sharp curve in the road

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Moses Mountain in the distance. A special place on the Colville Reservation

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art?

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history.

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Snowy Owls

This year there has been a major irruption of Snowy Owls throughout the NW and other parts of the country. These bright white owls nest up in the far north and most years a few of them show up in Washington in the winter and occasionally lots of them migrate south. There are different theories as to why some years so many stray so far from their traditional wintering grounds – lack of food, overly bad weather, a succesful breeding season producing too many owls for the available food and so on and so forth. Whatever the reason, it is always a treat to get out in the field and see them.

Four of us drove more than 100 miles through Okanogan and Douglas Counties searching for them and we were fortunate to find two just before the cloud cover lowered nearly to the ground. This was the closer one and really, it wasn’t very close for my meager camera equipment. There are lots more Snowy Owl images out there of far better quality than mine. For me, it’s more about seeing the bird and being graced by its presence.

In addition to two Snowy Owls, we also saw a large flock of Snow Buntings, a Gyrfalcon, sevearl flocks of Horned Larks, numerous Rough-legged Hawks, a Merlin, quite a few American Kestrels and lots of waterfowl on the Columbia, Methow and Okanogan Rivers, including Trumpeter Swans and a pair of Eurasian Wigeons. It was a good day of birding.

 

 

As we watched, this bird spent much of the time preening

 

I like this image because it shows the big feather-covered foot

 

 

If you are interested in searching for Snowy Owls, here is a map showing reported sightings around the country.

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

We stayed six days at Malheur NWR. Originally we had intended to stay maybe three days and then move on to the Redwoods and southern Oregon however the long days in the truck were really wearing and we were enjoying Malheur very much despite weather that ranged from rain to snow to hail with lots of high winds thrown in just for fun. Most of the weather came in sudden bursts with sun breaks in between. We generally timed our outings to avoid the drenching rains and managed to get in good birding, some nice walks and a brief bike ride. Sadly the weather conditions did not make for good photography conditions. I made the best of it when I could.

 

Frenchglen is a must stop in that part of Oregon. It has a school, a BLM office, a store that is rarely open and then with a surly shopkeeper, and a historic hotel. And it is usually swarming with birders!

 

Much of our birding was done from the truck in order to avoid wind and rain. Note the various layers of clothing. We wore many combinations in order to stay warm. I was happy to have my rubber boots with me.

 

White-faced Ibises. There were many thousands of them, it seemed.

 

 

 

The Hooded Warbler. If you look at your range maps, you will notice that this bird should not be in SE Oregon. Going through Frenchglen one morning we saw lots of birders searching with their binos; we even ran into birding friends from the Walla Walla area. Turns out everyone was searching for the Hooded Warbler that had been seen the day before. Alas, we did not find it despite tromping around in the wet grass and brush for an hour or more. The next day, at the P Ranch, as I rode by on Ken’s bike, a man said, ‘Hey, are you interested in a Hooded Warbler?” Screech, went the brakes! Oh yeah. What a find.

 

 

My, what big ears you have.

 

Lots of nesting shorebirds including this Black-necked Stilt.

 

The air was often full of the sound of winnowing Snipes.

 

I know, it’s hard to see however there is a Sandhill Crane on a nest down there.

 

Magnificent landscapes everywhere we turned. And water. So much water.

 

This intersting allium had me stumped. I still don’t know its species. It was on top of a basalt mesa.

 

One in full bloom.

 

 

 

Here you can see the outlines of the tops of the basalt columns that make up the mesa.

 

The rains produced lots of watering holes.