Slurpee Day - 7/11

This view from my local 7-11.  My image from www.39counties.blogspot.com

Just to clarify - 7-11 offers free slurpees every year on this date.  This was especially fun a couple of years ago when those were the ages of my two kiddos!   I paid my visit, totally forgetting the date, but picking up my "usual" coffee, bananas, mango-orange juice, and a donut at about 3 AM.  This has actually been an interesting part of my year that I haven't commented much on, since this is just down the road from me, but the Indian gentleman who runs the store has been one of my sponsors this year, in a way.  Most counties are far enough away that I simply wouldn't think of waking up in my own home and driving to them for sunrise, but Mason is perfectly placed for just that.  This has made 7-11 a ritual of sorts for me, and I was happy to cross paths with the pleasant business owner again.

Insert a Ruffed Grouse in this picture, and Ill be happy

I was on my way to Mason County for a day, a wedding the following day in Portland, and a week in Yellowstone to follow.  The family was going to drive out ahead of me with a side trip to Glacier, so they would be getting up early, but not as early as me!  I actually timed things pretty well, and did what I had wanted to do on my last trip to Mason - find some Ruffed Grouse! 


Ruffed Grouse and other game birds head out in the mornings in search of gravel to help digest the roughage they eat, so I thought I'd drive some gravelly roads in the early hours, hoping to find some in the road.  I got to FR 24 on the north side of Lake Cushman at 5 A.M., planning to head up to the roads leading to Mount Ellinor (there was a sighting up that way this year), but decided instead to not take the turn.  Rolling along on FR 24, I found no Ruffed Grouse for a little bit (spoiler alert... I didn't find any on this trip), but decided that I should get out and listen for birds anyway.

View from FR 24

The first stop was at a nice edge between forest and clear cut, and the birds were plentiful - Olive-side and Willow Flycatchers, Spotted Towhee, Cedar Waxwing, Common Nighthawks, Violet Green Swallows, White-crowned Sparrows, Western Tanagers and Swainson's Thrushes.  The nighthawks were a pleasant surprise, although memory tells me that morning is just as good as evening for them. 





I continued this theme of taking neither rights nor lefts, not really checking my map.  I passed more clear cuts and found another House Wren for the year - a bird that seems pretty easy for a code 4 bird!  I also passed an area with active logging operations.  They weren't up and about yet, but the logs they were harvesting were all stacked up ready to be moved.  And then... I passed a home!  I was surprised for a moment, then less and less surprised as I passed more, until I ended up popping out onto HWY 101 at Jorsted Creek!


I realize a map would have shown me this would happen, but it was so fun to just drive a road and keep going.  The gravel having been unproductive on that stretch, I made my way back up the road and followed signs to Hamma Hamma Campground, quickly realizing that these were roads I'd driven way back in January looking for owls in the middle of the night.  I didn't necessarily want to go to the campground, so I turned up from 2480 to 2401 which goes towards Jefferson Pass.

Sooty Grouse - FR 2480

Now... I wasn't totally clear at this point about exactly where I went, I'll admit, but I got up pretty high!  The first sign of elevation was a grouse in the road.  Not the kind I wanted, but still, it was nice to get a good look at a Sooty Grouse after simply hearing so many of them on hikes during the year.  This one poked around in the road for a while before scurrying off road and up hill.

Looking Southwest through the Jefferson Creek Valley from the ridge to the south.

Hermit Thrushes and Varied Thrushes became the dominant chorus on the way, and I had a few Vaux's Swifts flying overhead, giving off their high pitched calls and fluttering their wings quickly.  I had been asked about where to find them by email, and I was a little stumped!  They should be pretty common birds, but I haven't run into them much.  The only times I have had them this year have been times up above the west shore of Hood Canal in the Olympics.  On hikes, I've seen hollowed out trunks more than once, and those are just ones near the trailheads I walked.  I pictured more out there providing some roosting/nesting sites.

FR 2430 after a rough patch - easy walking

Heading up higher, I was following Jefferson Creek and I think I followed FR 2430 up and along the ridge south of Jefferson Ridge.  The road was a little sketchy for a bit, and I eventually decided to get out and walk - a good decision as the road quickly became undriveable!  Walking was a treat.  I had the thrushes keeping me company, although I really wanted to hear a Townsend's Solitaire joining the chorus!  If I were to make a return trip, I may have taken the road up towards Jefferson Ridge instead - just seems like more continuous habitat between southern Jefferson County where they are easier to find, and Mount Rose, where they have been seen twice this year, and where I was headed later in the day.


Townsend's Solitaires have always been mysterious birds to me.  I have never really gone out expecting to find one and just stumbled into it.  They're here and there in the winter, anywhere in migrations, and in the breeding season... they are up.  I studied the range maps on this one, and I really thought I was heading in the right direction when I took the Putvin Trail in June, but may not have gotten high enough.  I kept an eye on the talus slopes and anything resembling a meadow as I walked along the road, but found none of these lovely gray birds.

Berries!  I stumbled on this gorgeous patch of black-caps.

Black-caps and trailing blackberry

At the end of the line, there was a campfire ring, and a little break in the brush at the other side of the turnaround.  I walked through it and landed on a nice view, and a pretty fine berry patch!  Trailing blackberries and black-cap raspberries were in varying stages of ripeness making for some nice pictures and very nice eating!  I watched the fog roll through and accepted a light drizzle as the Olive-sided Flycatchers pip-pipped in the background.  On the way back through, I even had a rabbit join me in the little clearing.

A second Sooty Grouse flushed from the side of the road/trail as I returned to the car, but I still came up short of finding a Ruffed Grouse (although at that elevation, I may have had thin chances for them).  A whole morning gone without new birds!  It had to be the first such morning since I started this, but it was an awesome morning anyway.  I made my way back down carefully, taking the road back to Jorsted Creek and down 101.








Mount Rose

I'm not exactly a local... yet.  So why not get visitor info?

This was one of the more exciting leads I've followed this year.  I went to Mount Rose following two leads on Townsend's Solitaire.  I passed, then returned to, the visitor center at the start of the road heading up to Lake Cushman.  It was interesting to talk to the woman at the center, and the most important information I got was about mountain goats.  A few years back, a man died after being gored in the femoral artery by a goat.   Apparently, they can be pretty aggressive towards hikers, who, arriving at high elevations with their sweaty clothes, are basically like a big salty Dorito to the goats.  They'll be quite unshy about extracting that salt from your clothes!

This guy had goats approaching him and his family pretty aggressively.  He cleared his family off of the trail, and tried to make the goat retreat by poking at it with his trekking poles.  Apparently the goat responded by charging horns down, and things went bad very quickly.  It helped to hear the whole story - I never feel like I'm ready for wildlife encounters, and I always worry about the worst-case scenarios I could walk into. 

Armed with information, better shoes, and some warnings about the steepness of the trail, I started on my way up Mount Rose at about 11.  The first part of the trail was not too too steep and took me through a lot of salal - more berries to start the day!  I munched on some  - making them an excuse to stop when I found myself huffing a little bit.

There were a few benches at the bottom of the trail.

The birds on the way up were familiar - more Varied, Swainson's, and Hermit Thrushes, Dark-eyed Juncos, as well as some Red Crossbills and Pine Siskins.  I hadn't seen the latter around in a good long while!  Gray Jays were heard on the way up, as well as more Sooty Grouse, although for most of the walk, the Gray Jays stayed out of sight.  Pacific-slope and Hammond's Flycatchers also called occasionally. 


Many of the wildflowers that I had seen on the Putvin Trail were also here, although Indian Pipe was closer to full bloom.  It was interesting to consider these plants after talking to Mark Biser - these and Candystick are myco-heterotrophs.  They don't photosynthesize!  As a biology teacher trying to teach the differences between different kingdoms of life, this was a shocker.  Apparently they get their energy by parasitizing fungi.  I'll need to go wrap my brain around this idea, but it was a fun thing to learn at any rate.

Chlorophyll is for suckers!  Indian Pipe or Peace Pipe

Gray Jay - Mount Rose Summit.

I was powering up this trail - eyes down and all, and... somehow I missed a sign that shows where the summit loop started.  There's a loop trail that starts from a junction that provides two routes to the summit - the steep short road, and the long easy road.  I hadn't planned on making it to the summit - as I just wanted to put in a good search for Townsend's Solitaires and call it a day, but at one point, hikers on their way down told me that I was halfway to the summit along the hard route.  Whoops.

Grr... Rugged selfie highlighting "The Brennan Squint"

Many switchbacks later, I made it to the summit.  I arrived right on the heels of a man and his two sons, and they were in the process of meeting two Gray Jays when I got there.  The birds were coming in to take snacks off of hands, and it was nice at any rate, to make this a seen bird.  There were a pair of rocks behind the elevation sign that gave a better view.  I made it to the farther rock (not bad with an ankle sprain... did I mention that?  Ha!) and got a view of clouds below... until they parted and Lake Cushman revealed itself.

Lake Cushman from the Mount Rose Summit

Mount Ellinor is a more popular hike, and gets a lot more traffic, but I was pretty happy with the view, and especially happy that I made it to the top of something this year!  I waited about thirty minutes for the family to head out while I ate my lunch, and bundled up as I went from sweaty to chilly.  When they left, I had about ten to fifteen minutes of quiet to listen in earnest for solitaires, but got none.  Juncos, a Pacific Wren and a Rufous Hummingbird were found at the top, but no plaintive whistling sounds. 

The easy way

Making my way down, I took the long easy route.  This would have been a frustrating route for ascending, as the scenery would make a person think they were almost there... for a long time!  On the way down it was nice not to have anything too too steep. 

I got nearly to the junction again, and had just heard some Red Crossbills and Pine Siskins when a strange sound came from above the canopy.  It sounded a bit like crossbills, but I couldn't place the type.  Crossbills actually come in ten (more?  I have to look at that) types that vary by their calls and the types of trees they use for food.  Type three is the most common in this neck of the woods, and they give a low flat call that almost fit the calls I heard.

While I tried to figure this out, the calls were followed by a long string of rapid notes that had a vaguely electrical feel to them, and I was pretty puzzled.  One bird that came to mind was Black Swift - I had been listening to the recordings in the car on the way over and the birds seemed to be circling (based on calls moving... I still couldn't see the suckers) above the canopy, rather than perching and calling from one spot. 

I pulled up my IBird app and played Black Swift and was excited to hear a good match for the calls.  I waited and listened for five to ten minutes (they didn't call the whole time) and tried to rule out other Swifts, swallows and finches.  I tried for recordings, but by the time I got around to it, some thrushes were too loud to allow the calls to come through.  At one point I did get a view of a bird about the right size gliding across a small part of the canopy. 

http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Cypseloides-niger?&view=3
A link to the calls - I was hearing something like 14995 near the end.

I realize that I may have taxed many readers with three paragraphs just talking about Black Swifts - should have warned people to skip it perhaps!  These guys are code 5 birds, though, so I had to do some work to make sure they had actually made their way all the way over from the Cascades where (all of them ostensibly) they make their homes.  It was a warm cloudy summer day, which makes it more likely that these guys would wander over yonder.  Worth noting that the folks on eBird accepted the observation, so I feel good about calling that bird 164 for the year!


Evening


I made it down.  I'll admit that my knee started crapping out on me during the last stretch, and it got a little easier to take some stretches backwards.  Ugh.. but I made it down.  Dinner was at the Model T Pub and Eatery in Hoodsport.  I'd read about the broasted chicken and occasionally bristly service.  They were only serving one of them that evening, but the hamburger and pint of beer really hit the spot!

The purple lines show roughly where I was exploring, although the squiggly line looks wrong

 

At this point, I made my way to Potlatch State Park, and was planning on setting up camp for the night, but I found that one of my tent poles had broken.  I was fed, but so sore and tired, and to top it all off, my phone had been hiccupping and was not allowing me to send out texts or calls.  In this sorry state, I made my way to the Biser's and walked their driveway (which was a long walk in this sorry state) and begged a bed off of them unannounced. 


They were, and have been, extremely gracious.  This is one of those times where I wish I was better with words.  Once or twice in the course of blogging all of this ridiculous birding stuff, I end up completely unable to express an idea adequately.  Just understand that as I simply say that I felt overwhelmed by how easily they have taken me in this year.


I showered (oh heaven) and fell asleep in their barn with dreams of Ruffed Grouse in the morning.