Our Northwestern North America Trip--long
Norm Saunders (osprey@ARI.Net)
Fri, 31 Jul 1998 04:26:29 -0500
<FontFamily><param>Courier</param><bigger>Dear 'spreyers,
<FontFamily><param>Courier New</param>Fran and I just returned from our big
summer trip to Washington and British
Columbia. It was our first trip to this
part of North America and Fran took
great pains to research possible routes
for us for months prior to the trip.
Here are the major statistics, followed
by a short run-down on our itinerary.
Greg Miller's 1998 odyssey
notwithstanding, our totals for 1998 now
stand at 400 for Fran and 405 for
myself, so we both managed to hit this
seemingly elusive goal this year!
Stats: 14 days birding
1800 miles driven
100 miles by ferry
100 miles pelagicing
6 miles death marching
Primary target species for the trip (all
seen):
<paraindent><param>left</param>Black-footed Albatross</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Blue Grouse</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Glaucous-winged Gull</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Marbled Murrelet</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Tufted Puffin</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Black Swift</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Vaux's Swift</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Red-beasted Sapsucker</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Pacific-slope Flycatcher</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Eurasian Skylark</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Northwestern Crow</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>American Dipper (Yea! Bird of the
trip!)</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Varied Thrush</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Crested Myna</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Cassin's Vireo</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Townsend's Warbler</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>MacGillivray's Warbler</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Gray Jay</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Black-billed Magpie</paraindent>
Second Tier Possibles (seen):
<paraindent><param>left</param>Williamson's Sapsucker</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Three-toed Woodpecker</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Townsend's Solitaire</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Pine Grosbeak</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Barrow's Goldeneye</paraindent>
Unanticipated lifebirds (seen):
<paraindent><param>left</param>Tufted Duck</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Mew Gull</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Thayer's Gull</paraindent>
Disappointing Misses (species actively
sought):
<paraindent><param>left</param>Black-backed Woodpecker (more
difficult here, easier on the East
Coast?)</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Sage Sparrow</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Xantus's Murrelet</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>White-tailed Ptarmigan</paraindent>
<paraindent><param>left</param>Spruce Grouse (for Fran)</paraindent>
12-13 July 1998--The first day was
mostly travel. Starting from Sea-Tac
Airport, just south of Seattle, we drove
north of the city, through Bill Gates
country, then East, into the Cascades,
stopping at Leavenworth for our first
night. Here we birded Wenatchee State
Park, the Entiat River Valley, the
Leavenworth area itself, and finished up
our second day by driving into the rain
shadow of the Cascades, the Okanagan
Valley area.
14-15 July 1998--Second and third nights
we spent in the town of Okanagan and
from this locale explored Pateros, the
Loup-Loup Campground, Alta Lake, fields
surrounding the Okanagan Airport, Fort
Okanagan at the confluence of the
Okanagan and Columbia Rivers, and other
back roads in the area. The Okanagan
Valley is a remarkable contrast to the
lush vegetation of the Western side of
the Cascades--we found it to be quite
reminiscent of our time in Arizona and,
indeed, we found many of the dry country
species in this part of our trip. As we
left Okanagan we birded the Concanully
Road and Lake areas then drove north up
the lonely Sinlahekin Valley Road,
finally crossing the border into Canada
and finishing the day at the little town
of Oliver, in British Columbia.
16 July 1998--Leaving Oliver for a long
day of driving, we began by birding
Vaseux Lake Provincial Park near Oliver
then we took a little known dirt road
back into the Cascades, from Oliver to
Cawston. Along this little-traveled
road we found flocks of feeding Pine
Siskins and Purple Finches. Finally we
just settled down for a 2-hour drive to
our stopping point for the next few
days, the lodge at Manning Provincial
Park in South-Central British Columbia.
17-18 July 1998--This was the scenic
high point of our entire trip. Manning
Park is a wonderful place to visit and
to bird, offering many habitats, trails,
and mountain roads to explore. The high
alpine meadows were in full bloom when
we were there and birds were nearing the
end of their nesting season. Two of our
most difficult target birds were located
in the park, both in the early morning
hours of the day we left the park--Pine
Grosbeak and American Dipper. We also
tallied Gray Jay and Clark's
Nutcracker's here, in abundance. After
leaving Manning Park we continued
westward to Tsawwassen, a suburb of
Vancouver, and finished the day by
birding the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, a
private sanctuary that seemingly catered
primarily to Rock Dove, European
Starling, Canada Goose, and Mallard.
19-20 July 1998--Our most-wanted target
in Vancouver was the slowly declining
Crested Myna, introduced to the city a
few decades ago. Thanks to Fran's
diligent Internet research ahead of our
trip, we drove immediately to a specific
street corner, looked up at the third
rooftop from the end, and were
immediately rewarded with great views of
about 5 individuals of this sometimes
hard-to-find species. From here we
attempted to bird the big city park but
were frustrated by some sort of Asian
Festival that had filled the park to
bursting by 7:30 in the morning! Rather
than fight the crowds we drove to Iona
Island, bordering the Vancouver
International Airport, where we tallied
a real surprise for us, a Tufted Duck.
In a rash moment we decided to walk out
the jetty at Iona Island. Somehow or
other, in my general confusion, I had
gotten the impression that the jetty was
1 kilometer from start to end. After
walking for 2 hours and FINALLY reaching
the end of the jetty (at a certain point
visions of the Bataan Death March danced
in my head). It was worthwhile--at the
end we tallied all three scoters,
Surfbird in breeding plumage, and the
only Black Turnstones of the entire
trip. But then, of course, we had to
turn around and walk back. When we
finally got back to our car we realized
the roundtrip out the Iona Island Jetty
was a tad over 6 miles. We finished the
day by birding along the shore of
Boundary Bay, looking with little
success for migrant shorebirds. The
next day, the 20th, began early with a 7
am ferry ride from Tsawwassen to Swartz
Bay, the latter on the Saanich Peninsula
of Vancouver Island. Our target bird
here was the Eurasian Skylark, which
turned out to be a lot more elusive than
the mynas in Vancouver.
21-22 July 1998--Since our first attempt
to find the skylarks had been so
singularly unsuccessful (Fran thought
she saw one for a flash as it
disappeared into high grass, I missed it
totally) we made a few phone calls (once
again, thanks to Fran's diligent
Internet research ahead of time) and
hooked up with Barbara Begg of North
Saanich. This friendly, outgoing woman
is apparently the area expert on the
skylarks and their current status (she
led Gene Scarpulla to his Skylark back
in 1986 and some other nameless Maryland
couple to a sighting in 1987). We met
her and her granddaughter about mid-
morning, walked across a short-grass
field near the Victoria Airport, and
almost immediately turned up three of
the birds feeding on the short grass
here and also in the short grass
surrounding the runways of the airport.
Thanks, Barbara! Also we birded Clover
Point and picked out a Mew Gull from the
hoards of Glaucous-winged, Ring-billed,
and Heermann's, and Western Gulls. The
remainder of our time on the Saanich
Peninsula was spent being unabashed
tourists in Victoria, the capital city
of British Columbia, a wonderful place
to ease legs aching from the Iona Death
March! On the 22nd we caught the ferry
from Victoria to Port Angeles, for our
return to US soil, this time at the
extreme northern tip of the Olympic
Peninsula. The boat trip was pretty
much uneventful with the exception of a
Marbled Murrelet as we began our
approach to the jetty protecting the
Port Angeles harbor. We finished the
day with quick trips to Dungeness NWR
and Ediz Hook (where we saw our first
Thayer's Gull).
23-24 July 1998--Our stay in Port
Angeles began this day with a drive up
into the Olympic Mountains to Hurricane
Ridge, another gorgeous Alpine Meadow
area in full bloom. We followed this up
by more extensive birding in the Sequim
area, near Dungeness NWR. The following
day we checked out of Port Angeles and
began the long trek to Westport, on the
Pacific Coast. Along the way we stopped
at the Hoh Rain Forest and at Ocean
Shores. We must have been getting tired
by this time because neither location
yielded anything terribly excited and we
were having trouble maintaining our
enthusiasm.
25 July 1998--This day we spent the
entire day at sea with Terry Wahl, the
doyen of Northwest Coast pelagic trips.
As with most of our other pelagic trips,
we spent the morning ALMOST getting sick
and the afternoon enjoying the thousands
of birds around us. At one point we had
easily 200 Northern Fulmar feeding on
the chum at the stern of our boat as
Tufted Puffins looked on from a safer
distance. Target birds here were Black-
footed Albatross and Fork-tailed Storm-
Petrel, both of which we saw in large
numbers.
26 July 1998--We finished our birding
for the trip with a visit to coastal
Tokeland, a site noted in Michael
O'Brien's book, for possibilities of Bar-
tailed Godwit. We didn't find any Bar-
taileds, but we did add our only Marbled
Godwits of the trip here. From Tokeland
we drove leisurely back to Seattle where
we re-packed and generally got our heads
straight for our flight home on the 27th.
A more detailed write-up, with
references and a detailed sightings list
will be forthcoming when we get to it.<FontFamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>
<nofill>
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Norm Saunders
Colesville, MD
osprey@ari.net