Unexpected Trip - 5/15/15

I made plans to stay home with my son, and he woke up sans fever, so it became a free day.  One of the biggest goals for the day was to take a little more time with the birds than the big days have allowed, so I penciled out a short list of birds that I hoped to find, dropped the kids off at school, and got heading out.

Kennedy Creek

Kennedy Creek at loooooooooooooow tide

My first stop this time wasn't Theler!  Heading through Olympia, I arrived at Kennedy Creek.  The day had been planned around other things besides tides, so I wasn't surprised that the tide was out.  I was just surprised at how far!

I think at some point in the year, I may do a big sit at this place, if only to get pictures of it when the tide is in different states.  A Kennedy Creek tide chart answer key of sorts.  An August day when I want to spend a lot of time looking for shorebirds could be the perfect time for a project like that.

So no birds of interest were floating around, and I moved on to my next stop.

Powerlines

Powerlines above Hurley-Waldrip Road

Okay, the directions were unclear to me from maps, so I'll explain how to get to this nice spot.  Head North on Highway 101 past Kennedy Creek, on the right, there is an exit for Hurley Waldrip Road.  Taking this and watching on the right, there is a gated entrance to a trail underneath power lines.  I had seen so many good reports from here, and I had my heart set on catching a House Wren along the trail. 

Checking on eBird, there are a few pins for House Wren in the southwest corner of the county, and checking on BirdWeb (through the Seattle Audubon site), I saw that the range for House Wren extended into this corner.  They are listed as a Code 4 bird, but I was pretty confident that they would be findable. 

Willow Flycatcher - actually one of the better awful pictures that
will be included in this blog post!

The first bird I found was not one I had penciled in, but was a new one for the year - Willow Flycatcher! (153 for the year).   Keeping with my plan to take more time with things, I took the first of a series of unnecessary pictures.  I hadn't taken many bird pictures on recent trips, so I thought I'd try to get them despite my short lens.  The results were almost universally poor, but I have a good sense of humor, so I'm putting them in!

A birdy trail under the power lines

The walk up proved to be pretty birdy!  Evening Grosbeak, MacGillivray's Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Black-headed Grosbeak, Pacific-slope Flycatcher and Warbling Vireo were among the birds seen and heard along the way.  About ten minutes in, I heard a singing House Wren.  And then it stopped.  I rolled my eyes and walked closer to where I had heard it.   Nothing.  I played a little bit of House Wren.  Nothing.  I pished a little, then tried waiting a little.  Nothing.

Gray's Harbor County over there.?  I'm not sure.

In the course of the year, there have been birds that I've heard, and I've trusted my ears in some cases (Mountain Quail, Barred Owl), but have been more careful at other times (Swallows and Hermit Warbler).   It wasn't that I was worried about whether or not it was actually a House Wren, but... for a Code 4 bird, it was frustrating not to see it!

I continued up the hill and heard more birds, reaching a crest and wondering if I was looking into Gray's Harbor County.   I started heading back down and heard the bubbling song of the House Wren  (154) again.  As I walked closer it quieted for a couple more minutes and I almost lost hope on seeing it, but finally a pretty plain brown bird popped up and sang for me in plain view.  Included is a pretty amazing picture.  "He bothered to include that crappy picture...???"  "Yup"  "...amazing".


See the tiny dot.. on top of the.. wait a sec.
Okay, I brushed the screen to make sure it wasn't just a smudge - right on top of the little stick-things in the middle of the pic.   House Wren!  Woo hoo!

Sanderson Field 

Farmland - Hurley Waldrip Road

From the powerlines, I continued along Hurley Waldrip, which eventually hits highway 108, passing through some lovely farmland along the way.  108 to 101, and I was on my way to Sanderson Field. 

A familiar sight!  I've looked here for larks before, but not
with the same persistence and belief, perhaps.

I had worked to contact the person in the Washington DFW in charge of monitoring the Streaked Horned Larks at Sanderson Field near Shelton.  Despite rumors I had heard that the larks had not returned, due to loss of habitat, he confirmed that they were around, and pretty easy to find.  "They're not here in huge numbers... about 20, but they're easy to see from the access road."  I asked some questions to confirm that this was an area where I had searched before, and he confirmed. 




"Any calm sunny morning, you should be able to see them out there skylarking.   If you can't find them... you might want to find a different hobby!"  he added with a laugh.  Challenge in hand, I arrived at Sanderson, parking on the edge of the access road near the south edge of the field, fairly close to the freeway, and started my search. 



Success!  A lark "skylarking"

It went slowly at first.  Really slowly.  15 minutes of walking back and forth pulled up some Savannah Sparrows, and the Yellow Warblers in the Scot's Broom sang their hearts out, but I started wondering if the light breeze counted as calm, if the patchy clouds still allowed it to be called sunny and if 11:00 was still properly morning. 

I heard a phantom tinkling call from a lark... I thought.   The same frustration crossed my mind.  "Don't make me count that..."  I murmured, and continued my pacing.  Then I heard the song repeated more frequently.  I scanned the ground, then realized where it was coming from!

Streaked Horned Lark - Species 155 for the year!

When Jeff from the WDFW had said "skylarking",  I nodded on the other end of the phone, but only really had vague guesses about what that was.  When I looked up, it was pretty obvious.  The lark (155) was 100 feet or more up in the air, flapping its wings to hover in place long enough for me to get a shot.  After a half a minute, it dove downward and landed nearby - again, sticking around long enough to let me photograph it and get some good long looks. 

I'm not sure if I'll spend too much time scanning these fields until winter.  In talking to Jeff, there were some changes that made it unlikely that Vesper Sparrows would take much interest in nesting, as they have in years past.  Although Ring-necked Pheasant has been spotted near the field this year, his take on the bird is that it's a pretty poor tick for Mason County - releases happen fairly frequently, and it's doubtful that there has been any sustained population.   So for now, it was off to Sunnyside Road.

Sunnyside Road



View of the Skokomish from Sunnyside Road

Sunnyside Road runs parallel to Skokomish Valley Road, and I've stopped there once before this year (back in early May), but I had decided it had so many possibilities that I really needed to walk it.  I parked at an early pulloff with a view of the Skoke, and quickly found a Spotted Sandpiper (156) flying down the river, then up the river shortly thereafter.  A Common Merganser floated along the river as well.



Sunnyside Road - not a bad walk at all

My walk produced no new birds for the year - I had dreams of Lazuli Bunting, Red-eyed Vireo or Western Wood-Pewee - but it was very birdy!   I don't usually list out all of the species I get at each location, but why not:



Cassin's Vireo at close range

Canada Goose, Mallard, Common Merganser, Great Blue Heron, Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, Spotted Sandpiper, Band-tailed Pigeon, Red-breasted Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Hammond's Flycatcher, Pacific-slope Flycatcher, Cassin's Vireo (awesome looks at some silent birds!), Warbling Vireo, Common Raven, Northern Rough-winged Swallow (still at nests - found another one), Black-capped Chickadee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Brown Creeper, Marsh Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglet, American Robin, MacGillivray's Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Townsend's Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Song Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Western Tanager, Black-headed Grosbeak, Red-winged Blackbird, Purple Finch and American Goldfinch.   Not a bad stop at all, and a handful of those birds moved from being heard-only to seen birds along the way!


Still Waters Farm

It just looks like a pretty meadow - but this is an area where logs were dragged through in wet weather - totally tearing up the understory.  The grasses here and the willow in the middle have grown to fill in the space.

From here, I made quick stops at Purdy Creek and the mouth of the Skokomish - hoping for a Cinnamon Teal or Northern Shoveler.  No luck!   From there, I went up Webb Hill Road to meet up with Mark Biser.



Manzanita - a favorite for quail

Mark and his wife Beth have all but adopted me this year as I've been working on this big year, and they had a few leads from their "neighbors".  I put neighbors in quotes because in this part of the county - north of Shelton, and east of 101, it's mostly tree farms in the neighborhood of 100 acres.  There were two leads that were of interest:  Northern Harrier and California Quail. 




Northern Harriers are not a hard bird in the county - but they are a bird I keep missing.  The Biser's friends, however, had the beautiful raptors nesting on their property - not the first time for them!  The male and female had been seen off and on during the summer hunting on the property.  Apparently, one of them had come and taken a dust bath in the sandbox he had made for his daughter! 

California Quail are listed as a Code 4 bird in the county - they used to be common, but the belief, I believe, was that they have been pushed out of the county by Mountain Quail.  Mark disagrees.  In this part of the county, people are out on their property an awful lot, and see enough birds to distinguish something like California and Mountain Quail.  From what he can tell, there are still a lot of California Quail hanging about, and I was hopeful that we would stumble across some on our walk. 

Probably a spot where a quail (California or Mountain) had itself a little dust bath to keep off the mites.

We drove some private lanes and arrived at the house, quickly finding some Band-tailed Pigeons.  We checked out the backyard - behind the dense trees and down in the valley was where it seemed the Harriers were nesting.  We waited and watched and listened, but decided to try our luck at walking the property a bit after a little bit of quiet. 

Bear Grass - one flower we saw quite often on the walk.

I did get a new bird for the year - Cedar Waxwings (157) - heard only as they passed overhead.  Otherwise, this trip was more about Mark and I sharing our expertise.  There were a few singing birds that we had a chance to listen to and see, including a Warbling Vireo singing no more than ten feet from us.  That's about all I had for Mark!





From him, I learned:

1) Quail take dust baths to remove/inhibit mites.  He showed me places where this had happened.
2)  How to identify quaking aspen, and western white pine.
3)  Porcupines are tree pests, eating saplings, but they are generally believed not to hang out East of Highway 101 - a belief that Mark also questions, based on evidence that he's seen with trees on his property and others.
4)  The tree farms in this areas are not being harvested on any large scale at all - they are habitat that is being rebuilt from the clear cuts they used to be.
5)  Not everything that looks like a bee actually is.  Mimic flies are both of the things their names imply.
6)  Western White Pines that are unhealthy will often throw all of their large cones in a last gasp attempt to propagate.
7)  Green Darners are blue dragonflies.  They migrate.
8)  The little blue dragonflies aren't dragonflies - they're damselflies.
9)   It's easy to get good views of Northern Flying Squirrels!  All I have to do is help him clean out the duck boxes in the spring.  Apparently they often come scurrying out of the boxes when they get opened during cleaning.
10)  Pines are considered weed trees by a lot of tree farmers.  They grow easily and have little timber value.  Mark uses them to help build habitat.

Quaking Aspen at center - the leaves are shaped like little airfoils, which
makes them "quake" as the leaves shimmer back and forth quickly
in the breeze.

It's just a small sampling of the talk over the course of two hours.  It was a pleasure to be with someone who knew the place so well - the plants and insects and fungi and birds and mammals that make their homes in these farms north of Shelton.  We bushwhacked off of the trails now and then, looking for better views of a valley where we suspected the harriers were nesting, but came up empty.  It was still one of the most enjoyable walks of the trip.




I ended my trip - needing to get back to Renton to pick up dry cleaning and take kids to track practice.  It was maybe the first trip I made without even half-stopping at Theler.  I don't know why, but I felt good about this.  One could probably see a lot of Mason County birds by just stopping there and not running around to every corner of the county... isn't that a scary thought???  

Okay - probably done until June, although I left the Mason County Forest Festival brochure lying around and may have piqued my daughter's interest... we shall see!