October Blanket Trip - Sunday October 9th

Bright and early - always bright and early.  I had crashed awfully early with Kevin the night before (and probably snored, and he probably said nothing about it), and found myself up at midnight.  I graded papers until about two, and then returned to sleep.  Up at a reasonable hour (no alarm) and I left Kevin carless in Chelan.  He had the Christie's from the Seattle area, and Meredith Spencer from Bridgeport on their way to meet him at the hotel for their leg of the trip, while I was on my way to Wenatchee.

Confluence State Park

Man... one of these times I'm going to get to this park early, like... 1 AM, and I'll just sit and wait and have that Barn Owl greet me.  Today it was too late to make that a reality, but I have this Linus and the Great Pumpkin belief about it which has led to similar results each trip.  I pulled into Walla Walla Point Park and found a circle of cars with a bunch of weirdos standing around it sporting binoculars.  I knew I was in the right place.  Mary Frey (from my neck of the woods in South King County) and Dan Stephens from Cashmere were the final additions to our crew for the blanket trip.

We discussed plans for the day, and possibilities, then broke it up.  Mary drove Laurie, Patrick and I to Confluence, leaving her car.  Dan made his way towards Leavenworth with Jay and Ruth. 

The park was gorgeous.  I really do regret not having pictures.  I explained in my last post that my pictures were on my computer, but were lost recently, so I'm all text on this one!  Leaves were just starting to fall in earnest, and it was much clearer than the previous day.  We really gave this whole park a solid going over.  There were sparrows to inspect (White-crowned and Song in decent numbers, and a Gorgeous look at a Lincoln's sparrow just after crossing the bridge and turning into Horan), Yellow-rumped Warblers galore, numerous grebes, including Pied-billed, Western, Horned, and a couple Red-necked, which can be hard to find in the county at times, but apparently not this fall.  There were not many raptors during the walk, but a Northern Harrier flying along the river, and a Peregrine Falcon flying overhead were some very nice highlights.

Laurie and Mary caught a nice surprise with a Cassin's Vireo during a brief split.  Patrick and I found a Marsh Wren on the other half of the split around Horan.  After coming together, we came to a series of inlets and ponds, looking them over to inspect the teals we occasionally found.  The Green-winged Teals, aside from being smaller, eventually stood out for us because of the overall similarity between the head and body - both being a bit dark.

Then we came across a juvenile teal.  Oh dear.  We studied it for some time, and at all angles.  The bill did not seem shoveler-like... although that did not seem to be an important field mark here, as neither juvenile develops the longer bill that adult Cinnamon Teals do.  The bird had a dark bill, and a more distinct eye line than Cinnamon Teals appear to have.  It also had a warmer color on the breast, which points to Blue-winged (Cinnamon Teal juveniles are more bleached out on average), and the feathers were more distinctly patterned rather than muted/washed out.  All of those pointed to Blue-winged, so we felt comfortable calling it.  With all of the birds that were identified easily and/or quickly during the year, this was a nice one to puzzle through, and it was nice to have others along to play devil's advocate.  190 for the year!  (although... I didn't realize at the time that it was really 191, since we had actually seen Surf Scoters).

The trip ended with an extremely thorough look at about 120 American Wigeon.  We were not able to find a Eurasian in the mix, although I was giving both the males and females a good look.  We hung it up around 9 or 10 and made a run for Malaga.

Malaga...

...is apparently not only the name of a locality on the Columbia (fittingly on Malaga Road), but also a name connected with a mine.  As I was telling Laurie and Patrick that we were heading there, it caused some confusion!  We at least avoided the ultimate wrong turn (it's not all that easy to get turned around once you're on your way to East Wenatchee) and headed south on Malaga Road.  This is where I'd found Lark Sparrows, a Prairie Falcon and a Loggerhead Shrike back in June.  On this trip, I had hopes for a Rough-legged Hawk or a Northern Shrike, maybe even a Northern Pintail on one of the three lakes near Malaga.

We made our longest stop at Meadow Lake, and found something I'd only seen at the Wenatchee waterfront:  A Ring-necked Pheasant!  It was hard to pick out at first, as it perched on a tree over a little marsh across the road from Meadow Lake proper.  It looked a bit ridiculous! 

Too much time and not enough places to go... wait... switch that... reverse it.

We had an hour.  My inclination was to make a bee-line for Mission Ridge, where Black-backed Woodpecker and Brown Creeper had been seen on recent visits.  The collective wisdom was against me, however, and we instead drove to Mission Ridge, stopping here, stopping there.  It's how I usually bird when I'm less directed or new to a place, and although it's not how I would have done it left to my own devices, we still got about 20 minutes at the top to stroll and listen for any of the above and play for Northern Pygmy-Owl. 

Having completed our run of Wenatchee and the south end, we returned to Walla Walla Point Park to get the highlights of the day. 

Dan's trip to Leavenworth had yielded some nice Ponderosa Pine birds, including White-headed Woodpecker and Pygmy Nuthatch at the Sleeping Lady.   We reported our grebes, sparrows and teal.  Kevin told us at that point about the Scoter he had found at Will Risk Park in Entiat.  I still thought I needed a Surf Scoter, so I hopped in Kevin's Car after saying some goodbyes, and we made a run for it.

This was a nice find.  Scoters from the West side make their way over in the fall, possibly up the Columbia, rather than... over the mountains, yeah?  It was one of the surprises I was expecting, which made up for some of the others we didn't find.   We scoped and high fived and returned to the car, continuing to talk about the day, including the American White Pelicans he had seen up near Wells Dam.

???

See, back on a similar trip in Mason County, Kevin had nonchalantly announced that he had a Heermann's Gull in the scope. I assumed he was joking because it was a code 4 bird, and we joke about things like that.  He wasn't joking then, and he wasn't joking this time either (just very casual about the Pelicans, having seen plenty of them on the Columbia when he lived in the Tri-Cities).  We ran farther up the road - exactly the kind of chase this trip was supposed to allow for. 

County listing exists because of lines.  There's this place, and that place, and a line that separates them.  We showed up and found the pelicans squarely on the other side of the line - over in Douglas County.  We waited...  Scoped them and enjoyed the birds... and waited.  "Well, I mean... they must have been at least past middle when we got here, don't you think?"  Kevin was giving me an out if I wanted to take it, but... if we're working with lines, it would make as much sense to count the birds and ones up on the plateau in Mansfield.  

Kevin's a teetotaler, but I dragged us down the driveway we'd been using to scope the birds, all the way down to the winery whose sign sat on the freeway where we'd turned:  Rio Vista winery.  Bugs... so many bugs.   The awesome and scary thing about crushing a lot of grapes is that bugs show up in droves.  I went ahead and got a tasting anyway, although I did end up pulling a fruit fly off of my tongue at one point.  The wine was great, and it gave us just enough time.

Back at the top of the driveway, we saw that two of the pelicans had floated, swum, or been carried over to the Chelan side.  One more high five, and Kevin and I were heading home.  192 birds for the year, with plans for one more trip!   The field trip had done just what I'd hoped, giving people a chance to see some new parts of the county, and freeing them to find birds at the end of the day.  Better yet, I was able to finish my grading on the way back as Kevin took over the driving.