The Next Day: In Which Good New Birds are Found (Sunday, May 3rd)

The new lines for the trip - finally a footstep in Olympic National Park!

Still Waters Farms

JC and I enjoyed the hospitality of the Bisers on Saturday Night, which included pizza and beer, ice cream and blueberry crisp, and most importantly (for me) a shower!  We talked into the evening and watched the bats descend onto their pond at dusk, sharing stories of the day, and enjoying the company of their friends from Germany who were staying with them for the week.  We threw our tent up next to their driveway for the night and listened for owls, getting nothing closer than a Band-tailed Pigeon during the night.

We woke up to Robins and Killdeer and decided to head into Shelton before sunrise.  JC and I broke down the tent and went into town along Brockdale Road.  I had a very satisfying experience as we drove the road - a Great Horned Owl crossed the road overhead!   I had been on this road in December, absolutely convinced that the habitat looked good for GHOW, and the flyover gave JC his third Mason County owl for the trip. 

In town, we hit a cash machine quickly, followed by Jack in the Box.  Things were starting to get a little light and birds were chirping, so we swung by the Mountainview neighborhood and heard a Western Scrub-Jay calling in this pretty-darned-reliable spot.  From there, we drove directly to the Lower Trailhead for Mount Ellinor.

Sunrise on Hood Canal

Mount Ellinor

Umm... at least they didn't shoot the birds?

It was nice to have a day with fewer plans, but we definitely had a long list of birds that were possible up in the area of Lake Cushman.  Although there are a lot of nice hikes in the area, I settled on Mount Ellinor, having heard that the Sooty Grouse in the area often line the gravel roads leading to the trailhead in the early morning.  We were unable to find any grouse on the way up, although we did stop in a little deciduous copse and listened to a Western Tanager (146) before arriving at the start of the hike. 

Not my picture!  This Townsend's X Hermit hybrid
has the field marks we saw - photo from the Arizona
Field Ornithologists website.

Mount Ellinor is a gorgeous hike, and one of the more popular ones in the area, but JC and I had arrived before anyone else was on the trailhead.  We had such a lovely walk - both of us are ear birders, and it's nice to have little stretches where there is just silent walking and listening.  Our first bird of interest was a bird that was singing a flawless Hermit Warbler song - rising and falling and clear as a bell.  We played for the bird and were able to see a clean face, but there was a lot of yellow below the bib, so I got to see my first Townsend's X Hermit Warbler hybrid!

It's not a chimney, but it's the kind of
place where Vaux's Swifts could roost,
I figure.

As we continued, Townsend's songs were the overwhelming favorite in the morning chorus, along with Wilson's, Black-throated Gray, and Orange-crowned.  With the dense canopy of trees above us, and trees crowding the view in most directions, we had a handful of heard-only birds during the walk.  The first ones were Vaux's Swifts (147), chirping from above the canopy on the way up and again on the way down.  We spent time from there keeping an eye out for hollow trees that might serve as nests!

Next was Sooty Grouse (148).  This was interesting for me, because I am often out with older birders that have lost their upper register for hearing (so no on kinglets and creepers - both of which we had on this hike), but JC and I have usually been able to pick up about the exact same sounds.  Of the three times that I was able to hear the deep slow pulsing of a booming grouse, JC was only able to hear this first one.  Do we get better at picking up lower sounds with age?

One of the first nice views from the lower trail.  JC couldn't stop thinking of the possibility of a Golden Eagle
cresting over one of these rock faces.  I had my first Golden Eagle in the Olympics, so this is the kind of place
where I'd want to search for birds like that (or Rosy finches, for example).  Thoughts for the fall!

The standard view during the walk.  This is why we couldn't
see the Sooty Grouse, and probably why the porcupine
didn't see me coming.

We rounded a corner with me in the lead, and I scared away a mammal that... in literally a two minute search for "mammals of the Olympic Peninsula", very well may have been a porcupine!  How exciting!  I'm glad the sucker ran away!  I will look through the mammal list more carefully, but this would be a life mammal for me.  If anyone has other ideas on approximately That-Sized Mammals that I may have run into on that trail, please let me know!   It did look short legged, and seemed kind of big.. like a little too big for a house cat, and I caught what looked like a fuzzy mix of darker and lighter browns.  Looking at the images, I'm seeing how the quills may have given off a fuzzy appearance, but I'm open to other ideas!

Peek-a-boo view of Lake Cushman from the Mount
Ellinor Trail

Other new birds called - a Gray Jay (149) with frustrating brevity, and Hermit Thrushes (150) with heart-wrenching beauty.  I loved loved loved being able to hear both Hermit and Varied Thrushes singing as we walked.   We did add another Olive-sided Flycatcher to our list on this hike, and finally decided to turn it back around after enjoying what appeared to be a Chestnut-backed Chickadee nest on the back side of a snag.

FR 2419

The forest road back down was very birdy, and at one point, JC and I stopped for what sounded like a good Hermit Warbler Song.  At the pulloff we made, we were able to get looks at three warblers.  A Townsend's Warbler singing a Townsend's song, a hybrid singing an almost perfect Hermit song (but ending with a high strident note a la Townsend's), and finally a pure Hermit Warbler (151), with a clean white breast and flanks and an unmarked face.  This actually turned out to be more fun than I had expected.  I had always figured that these warblers would never come into view, or that the views would be too incomplete to determine anything, but a little bit of homework paid off, and we were finally able to find one pure one.

Very birdy thicket!  FR 2419

We continued down the road and stopped in the spot where we had the Western Tanager earlier.  This little pocket was dripping with song - Wilson's, Black-throated Gray, and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Pacific slope and Hammond's Flycatchers, Western Tanager, Warbling Vireo, and my final new bird of the trip - Cassin's Vireo (152).  We had really only stopped here because we thought it might be good for Ruffed Grouse - a missed bird for the trip, but what a great stop!




Lake Cushman

Lake Cushman

There's GOT to be a Spotted Sandpiper here in a month.

We returned to the highway and continued towards Staircase (a lovely campground, but a fee was required, so we made it to the parking lot, ate an apple and departed).  We returned to a stop on Lake Cushman that we are totally convinced must be good for Spotted Sandpiper.  It's a little early for them, but we tried anyway (heck, it was a little early for a LOT of the birds we had this weekend), without luck.  I enjoyed getting to see this lake - one of those things that you see on a map and think "Hmm.   Big lake", but you don't fully comprehend until you visit it and drive the length of it.

Hoodsport

The sign in the window is right.  As long as us
old folks can have a nap

One thing I need is a mug from every county in the state.
I finally got one here for Mason County!

I took a nap.  No lie.  I was so tired at this point from the weekend, and had made the hike with no more caffeine than is found in a Jack in the Box large coffee.  I stopped at the Hoodsport Coffee Company (which also could have given me a licorice ice cream cone if I had wanted one!), got a 20 ouncer, and took a nap!

JC hopped out and added House Finch to his trip list, and scanned the swallows at Hoodsport, hearing at least one Purple Martin call in the mix before we left. 

Hood Canal and Victor

Shellfish gathering on Case Inlet - Victor Overlook

We made a few stops along Hood Canal, but it was mostly empty.  We were able to come across some Western Grebes and Surf Scoters, but nothing much more interesting than that.  Our final stop was at Victor Overlook.  I had never been there with a full parking lot!   We got out and scanned the water (as the Osprey overhead scanned the water too - we noticed a nest on the other side of the highway), and found very few birds.  The beach, however, was full of people digging for clams and oysters.  I was bummed that I didn't have the tools and licenses to join them - maybe another day!

I might be wrong, but I think the tubes are for geoducks.
I'm a little more confident when I say geoducks aren't ducks.

We glided back across the county line and off to our homes.  I got home and got the full story on the track meet I had missed.  April had been a hard month for Mason trips - I simply couldn't get over for one - and this weekend was the best I could find for May.  I'm hopeful that the next trip will be a Father's day walk with the family, although I may take a personal day from school between now and then.  We shall see!