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Tag Archives: Moses Coulee

Seasons are Changing

Two days ago, the girls and I took a road trip to visit Spring. And a little bit of Winter. Our, well my, main goal was to see a Snowy Owl and I managed to do that after one hundred miles of driving. The girls’ main goal was to walk on dirt instead of ice. They managed to do quite a bit of that and enjoyed all the smells of wet dirt and early spring. The snow had just melted in parts of Douglas County and left moist ground, sometime just plain mud, and water all over the place. Water was laying in wheat fields, crossing roads, pouring over coulee walls. Oh, and it was cold enough that much of it was ice-covered.

Sadly, much of what we saw was burned down to dirt in last Labor Day’s Pearl Hill wildfire. Much of the ash has already blown away or been washed away. The vast landscapes look barren with little sagebrush remaining. I had hoped for a few Spring birds but there was nowhere for them to perch or take cover.

The skies were incredibly blue. The snow-covered mountains on the horizons were lovely. Sunshine warmed us. The coulee walls were lit up with lichens. We enjoyed walking on dirt and getting away from our ice and snow-covered world at home.

Snowy Owl with Moses Mountain in the background to the north
And to the west, the snow-covered central Cascades
Most of the big coulee burned last Labor Day. It’s painful to see.
Possibly rabbitbrush
Rock Pigeons caught the sunlight as they soared around the coulee walls
This trail used to go through head high sagebrush

I saw 54 bird species scattered over numerous habitats. Nothing rare. They were:

Canada Goose

Tundra Swan

American Wigeon

Mallard

Canvasback

Redhead

Ring-necked Duck

Greater Scaup

Lesser Scaup

Bufflehead

Common Goldeneye

Hooded Merganser

Common Merganser

Wild Turkey

California Quail

Pied-billed Grebe

Eared Grebe

Rock Pigeon

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Mourning Dove

American Coot

Common Loon

Great Blue Heron

Golden Eagle

Northern Harrier

Bald Eagle

Red-tailed Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk

Snowy Owl

Belted Kingfisher

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

American Kestrel

Northern Shrike

Steller’s Jay

Black-billed Magpie

American Crow

Common Raven

Horned Lark

Black-capped Chickadee

Pygmy Nuthatch

American Dipper

Varied Thrush

European Starling

House Sparrow

House Finch

Pine Siskin

American Goldfinch

Song Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Western Meadowlark

Red-winged Blackbird

Other Landscapes

No matter how much a person loves the place she lives, I think it’s always good to have a change of scenery. Yesterday Marcy and I and our dogs headed south to explore some of the coulee country spread across northern Douglas and Grant Counties. We enjoyed vast views across the flat wheat land of the Waterville Plateau with constantly changing weather conditions from sun breaks to various kinds of clouds and scattered rain showers. And then there were the geologic wonders of the water-carved coulees and amazing Dry Falls, left behind by the Ice Age Floods that occurred and reoccurred thousands of years ago.

It was a good day.

Winter wheat
Jameson Lake
Dry Falls
Late flower!
Luna
Sky and Luna
Guthrie

Moses Coulee and Beyond

I got out of the valley one day last week to do some birding in areas that really are ready for spring. We were hoping for a few winter specialties like Snowy Owls and Snow Buntings. We did see two very distant Snowy Owls in a field of green winter wheat with the last traces of snow still on it. But we dipped on the buntings. Other highlights included singing Sagebrush Sparrows in the coulee, a first of the season Mountain Bluebird, quite a good number of Rough-legged Hawks, three Golden Eagles and one sleepy Northern Saw-whet Owl. We were mostly in northern Douglas County but found the little owl on its regular roost near Bridgeport State Park in Okanogan County.

Moses Coulee, a result of the Ice Age Floods
It’s hard to imagine these columnar basalts were once lava flowing out of the ground.
Dutch Henry Falls
He barely opened one eye to look at us