7/01/2023   Wahkiakum County  (link to here)
In a visit earlier this spring we put 100 species within reach in Wahkiakum County. Today we completed the job. We knew where to go; Darchelle's research had determined that we could find all the species we needed by visiting just two locations - Julia Butler Hansen NWR + and a place called Alcyon Farm + - so visit them we did, after a stop at the Cathlamet Marina l+ and a brief exploration of Little Island +. The marina had been our first stop during our first (and unfortunately undocumented) visit to the county in 2019 so it just felt appropriate to stop there on this, perhaps our last, visit to the county four years later. Crossing the bridge onto Little Island felt familiar too, as if we had been there before even though we did not stop there back in March. But we had been there before, back in January 2021, to chase a rare White-tailed Kite. We encountered nothing rare this morning though between the two stops we added 14 new county birds, a strong start towards our goal. At Julia Butler Hansen l+ we added 6 more (5 for me since I missed the Caspian Tern) and at (or at least in the vicinity of) Alcyon Farm l+, another 5.
The hour or so we spent in the lush mixed forest along Oatfield Road near Alcyon Farm in Skamokawa (apparently pronounced Skamockaway) was a highlight of our weekend. The Sooty Grouse we both heard at the end of the county road was gratifying for me since the one I heard back in April may have been a phantom. The Barred Owl we flushed near the double-track driveway to Alcyon Farm was satisfying for both of us despite not being able to get a photo because our Barred Owl back in March was a heard-only bird.
Then there was the young male Hermit Warbler which Darchelle called out of the treetops after I suggested that the second-growth fir (and spruce?) forest around us should be mature enough to host them. It flew down to perch on a Salmonberry twig right outside my car window, turning this way and that and singing softly while it searched for its mysteriously invisible competitor. Sweet bird encounters enhanced by sweet memories of our 2019 stay at the nearby Inn at Crippen Creek +, memories made more poignant both by the Inn no longer offering the dinner and accommodations we enjoyed back then and by my own decline which would render the Inn inaccessible even if it were still open.
Wahkiakum completed, we set out for home Mason County.

7/02/2023   Mason County, mostly  (link to here)
We pulled into Shelton, Mason's County seat and perhaps only city with a motel, around 7 PM, too late to get started on our quest to find 32 more species of birds to add to Darchelle's county list. Instead we stopped at the Shelton Inn, a property which though neatly painted nonetheless manages to look a little long in the tooth, to inquire about a room for the night. Before Darchelle ventured into the office, I suggested that if the price was more than $200, we should just drive home and return tomorrow. We did not have to do that - the price of their last available ground floor room was $125 - but I did have to forgo pooping for the third day in a row because the toilet was too low and the bathroom too tight. The bed was nice and hard though and I would have slept well have we not stayed up too late once again watching Suits.
In the morning we stopped at Urraco Coffee Company +, conveniently just down the street. Darchelle picked me up a Drip with an extra shot to augment my preexisting coffee from yesterday and it was good but not until we got home did I realize how good. She had picked up a bag of their House Roast, as she is wont to do when we visit a new coffee shop, and it was exceptional. But I digress.
We had no plan for our campaign to complete Mason County but after a fruitless stop at the local marina we found ourselves in a lumberyard l+ in Johns Prairie a few miles north of town. Nesting Ospreys, a distant Turkey Vulture and multiple singing White-crowned sparrows gave us our first three species but it was behind shrink-wrapped packages of dimensioned lumber in a parking lot out back that our day really got underway. The dry brushy woodland of Lodgepole Pine and Douglas Fir fronted by a bank of willow and Scotch Broom delivered another 14 species for Darchelle's list. A brushy but otherwise undistinguished clearcut along Brockdale Road l+ provided another 4 species and West Skokomish Valley Road l+ supplied the rest. My most exciting bird of the day was a Black Swift flying directly away from us over the Skokomish River bridge but, unable to definitively identify it, we did not count it.
Mason County complete, we set out for home Kitsap County. Darchelle needed just a handful of summer forest species to top 100 and we found them in a wooded port Orchard neighborhood l+. The few neighbors who noticed us seemed a bit uncomfortable about our presence though perhaps we were imagining that; after all we are white, middle-aged, apparently heterosexual and driving a fairly nice car - you can't get much less threatening than that, at least while driving around a well-to-do white neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest.
Back at home the butterfly which had flown through the French doors into our Jungle Room the afternoon before we'd left town was dead on the floor. I identified it posthumously as a Lorquin's Admiral +, a common and territorial species whose caterpillars feed on cherry, willow, cottonwood and fruit trees. They inhabit a variety of habitats from southern British Columbia to the Mexican border with California. This website + has lots more information about them.

7/06/2023   Lincoln County  (link to here)
With the completion of Wahkiakum and Mason Counties last weekend, Darchelle has six counties left in which she does not yet have 100 species. Three of those are down in the southeastern corner of Washington; this weekend we set out to tackle the other three.
Those three counties comprise a contiguous block bordering the Columbia River in the northeastern quadrant of the state. From the Canadian border the Columbia flows south through about 70 miles of forested mountains in northeastern Washington before joining up with the smaller Spokane River and turning abruptly to the west. Ferry and Stevens counties encompass those forested highlands on the west and east sides of the Columbia respectively. Lincoln County m+ occupies the northern third of the Columbia Plateau +, straddling its northern rim and following the south bank of the Spokane River to its confluence with the Columbia then downstream to Grand Coulee Dam. The plateau is a primarily geographic feature which is more or less coterminous with the geologic province of the Columbia Basin +, a region of gently rolling hills, almost entirely devoted to dryland wheat cultivation, interspersed with deep canyons and rugged valleys which were carved into the underlying basalt by massive ice age floods. Lacking deep soils, these channeled scablands + have not been converted to agriculture so still retain native shrub-steppe habitat + with marshes and ponds occupying low areas scoured out by the floods.
In Lincoln County + the scablands are most evident in the area west and south of Sprague but otherwise, as we drove across the county on I-90 we didn't see anything but wheatfields and indeed the county is generally acknowledged as one of the largest wheat producers in the country, second only to neighboring Whitman County. The apparent absence of trees would suggest a corresponding absence of birds but the Washington Birder County checklist + includes 311 species while eBird + reports 310 species on about 12K checklists. By comparison, Whitman County has only 278 species in eBird + and even neighboring Spokane County, with more than 53K checklists, lags Lincoln at 308 species in eBird +.
Unlike in the rest of Lincoln County, the Columbia Plateau along its northern edge reaches an elevation sufficient to support groves of Ponderosa Pine before it drops precipitously down to the Spokane and Columbia Rivers in a series of forested canyons. Both the mixed coniferous forest on the canyon slopes and the ribbons of dense riparian vegetation along the mostly ephemeral streams in the floors of the canyons support diverse communities of birds.
Our plan was to visit those canyons early tomorrow morning so we drove over the mountains today to bird areas around Sprague for the afternoon before driving up to Davenport for the night. As the county seat and largest city, Davenport boasts at least two motels and twice that many restaurants. Sprague has a motel too but it looks as though it might have closed down several years ago, and moreover Davenport would be closer to our target areas. Sprague also has a lake l+ and a sewage treatment plant l+, both stocked with waterfowl, and between the two locations we added 15 species to Darchelle's county list.
By the time we reached Davenport, the Davenport Motel had filled up so we stayed at the Black Bear, not our favorite but at least they had a room. We stayed in room 6, the "City Slicker", and it was better than the last room we stayed in, the "Farmer", but the lighting was still dingy, the bathroom still inaccessible and the bed still too soft. Still for all that we enjoyed a comfortable supper together, though we once again stayed up later than we should have watching Suits. In the morning during breakfast I discovered that I had acquired a new ailment - a hollow popping sound below my left ear each time I bite down while chewing. Dr Google diagnosed it as TMJ after we got home.

7/07/2023   Lincoln County again  (link to here)
We spent the prime hours of the morning birding the Teel Hill Road l+ which traverses the upper reaches of one of the canyons north of Davenport, an area of pine forest, meadows and sagebrush flats with enough pockets of riparian willow and cottonwood to keep things interesting. We covered 10 miles and by noon we had accumulated 19 more species, putting us over our goal, but lacking Internet access to submit our checklist, we didn't know that so we kept birding. We followed Harker Road l+ down into a mixed forest of Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine in Harker Canyon. The comfortable warmth of the morning had ripened into the bright heat of midday but the birds didn't seem to mind too much; they were still out and about and we found quite a few of them, though only two were new. Darchelle had one more spot she wanted to try so we followed Green Canyon Road down to Mill Canyon l+, turned left and followed a gravel road down a valley with a wide strip of dense riparian brush - willows, dogwood, some cottonwoods and more.
We were about 1.9 miles down from Green Canyon Road when we heard a commotion in the dense willows along the road and stopped to investigate. The heat and lack of sleep were getting to me at that point so I nodded in and out of consciousness while Darchelle checked out the bird activity. While I was awake I noticed at least two Black-headed Grosbeaks, two male Yellow Warblers, a Willow Flycatcher or two and at least one colorful Bullock's Oriole all in the bushes just outside my open window. While I was not awake Darchelle spotted something else which, from the description she shared with me shortly after it flew off, sounded very much like a very rare Yellow-throated Vireo.

7/08/2023   Ferry County  (link to here)
Our original plan had been to work our way up through Stevens County yesterday afternoon, spend last night in Colville, wrap up Stevens if necessary this morning then head over to Republic in Ferry County, where Darchelle needed about 40 species. An afternoon around Republic and a morning birding down the Sanpoil River + valley to the Keller ferry should put Darchelle over the top in time to complete the four hour drive back to Seattle for a celebratory dinner at home.
Needless to say, it didn't work out way. While I did not want to return to either Ferry or Stevens County, if I had to choose to leave one of them incomplete, it would be Stevens. Stevens isn't that far out of the way on a trip to Spokane, a trip we would probably be making sometime in the next month or two for some bird or another, but Ferry just feels remote. So it was that bright and not so early this morning we caught the Keller ferry across Lake Roosevelt (formerly the Columbia River) to finish Ferry County m+.
Ferry County + is the 4th least populous county in the state and may well enjoy a similar ranking in terms of number of bird species - 270 on the Washington Birder County checklist + and 245 on 6K checklists in eBird +. Our strategy for the county was to bird opportunistically in suitable looking habitats while on our way to two or three specific locations where species we needed had recently been reported. Our strategy worked. Ten hours after disembarking the Keller ferry into Ferry County we drove back out of the county at Kettle Falls with 55 new species for Darchelle's county life list putting her at 118, well over our goal of 102. Not only that, but we had acquired year bird #310 as well - a Spruce Grouse.
Immediately after leaving the ferry we encountered our first suitable habitat. The hills along the southern edge of Ferry County are about the only place in the county where shrub-steppe habitat can be found and there l+ we found our first dozen county birds, though only one or two of them were really shrub-steppe species.
Continuing up the Sanpoil River, we stopped at Bridge Creek l+ to call up a few species from the dense green thickets along the river before heading up into the mountains to look for waterfowl at Twin Lakes l+.
The mixed-age montane mixed coniferous forest in the vicinity of the lakes was good for woodpeckers as well. Thunder threatened rain from the cumulus clouds aggregating overhead but not until we were on the road did the showers get underway. With the rain the temperature dropped 25F but not for long. By the time we made it back down the hill to the river the sun was out again, the temperature was back up to 89F and the car was clean and dry.
Before we reached Republic we flushed a rufous Ruffed Grouse across the road and picked up swallows, blackbirds, Sora and a Snipe in a wet meadow l+ but not until we managed to find the sewage treatment ponds l+ just south of town did we hit the jackpot (quackpot?). Eight new species of waterfowl were shepherding their families around the ponds while an adult Bald Eagle looked on, affecting disinterest.
It was 6:40 PM when we crossed Sherman Pass heading for Kettle Falls and Colville, where we still needed to find a place to stay. I was worried that we if pulled into town too late on a summer Saturday evening we might find everything already booked but Darchelle wanted to look for a Spruce Grouse. She promised we would spend no more than 10 minutes driving up Albion Hill Road l+ and back so I agreed, even though I have only seen two grouse there in the past 10 years (the most memorable of them a year ago last fall) and there is no way we would get up there and back in less than half an hour.
We had burned through just about 10 minutes and traversed about a mile of good grouse habitat when I spotted a female Spruce Grouse standing on a rock next to the road on Darchelle's side of the car. Darchelle had not noticed it. I was too startled to say anything other than "There you go!" but Darchelle immediately knew what I meant. The grouse hopped oFf the rock before we were able to back up to it but lingered for a photo or two before fading into the forest with her several chicks.
The first motel we checked in Kettle Falls was full but that was just as well because the Comfort Inn in Colville, while not cheap at $174, had a spacious ADA room with a comfortable bed and a toilet tall enough for me to use in the morning.

7/09/2023   Stevens County  (link to here)
In 9 hours of birdwatching in Stevens County m+ today we managed to find 26 new birds for Darchelle, nudging her life list for the county over the 100 species threshold to 106. I really didn't think we would manage to do that so I was grateful for our success. I was less grateful that it took us another 6 hours to get home, though it helped that Suits on Darchelle's iPhone anesthetized me to the discomforts of the drive.
Stevens County + resembles its neighbor Ferry County + in size, topography and natural history but has 7 times the population. It also has a few more birds listed on the Washington Birder County checklist + (285) and in eBird + (268 on 15K checklists), thanks probably to its easier access from Spokane and other major population centers in the state.
We probably stayed up late; how late I don't remember, but we did not get an early start. It being Sunday morning, traffic was still reasonably light along Hwy 20 at our first stop, the oddly-named White Mud Lake l+ two miles east of Colville where Darchelle picked up a few ducks. We both did well at our next stop 15 miles farther up the road at the Amazon Creek marsh l+. The warblers weren't singing much but they readily responded to playback and Darchelle was able to get some photos. At nearby Black Lake l+ we found a pair of Common Loons. Returning to Colville we took the scenic route past Hatch Lake l+ and added three species of ducks to Darchelle's county list, boosting her total over 100. The gentle hills and valleys in that area, a few miles southeast of town, appear to be composed mostly of gravel and, in the satellite photos, appear to trend northwest to southeast while the surrounding mountains are mostly crystalline rock and do not have any consistent orientation. Once again though, I was tired and hot (94F) so did not pay much attention to either geology or birds.
Hoping to find a gull or two along Lake Roosevelt we took Hwy 25 from Kettle Falls down to Fort Spokane but it was a hot afternoon and the birds were for the most part laying low. We did find a pocket of activity at Gifford Campground l+ but not till we were about to cross the bridge out of the county at Fort Spokane l+ did we find the gulls we were looking for.

7/13/2023   Our Final County Birding Push  (link to here)
As usual, when Darchelle got up this morning I did not know what time it was. Once day breaks, the diffuse daylight in our bedroom provides no clue as to how high the sun has risen. We stayed up until 2 AM last night watching Episodes 82-85 of Suits + so I hoped that it was later then I feared it might be.
We made it out to the kitchen around 10:30AM, shared coffee and impressions from the recent episodes over coffee and scrambled eggs for breakfast. Darchelle gave me a shower then went out to water the garden while I sat down at the computer to write. I am way behind in my writing and did not make much of a dent in the backlog during the few hours I had this afternoon. I have yet to write anything about our road trip across the country and back, nor have I written about our county bird outings and family visits in June, but I did get started on a description of our visit to Lincoln County last month.
We departed for Dayton around 4 PM on what I hope will be our final county birding excursion. We don't need all that many birds but with the breeding season well underway and the summer heat building, the few birds we need could nonetheless be difficult to find. We stopped for neither coffee, gas nor birds until we reached Mesa Lake l+ south of Othello. The sun was close to the horizon and the air still and hot (though not nearly as hot as it would be for the next couple of days) but we still managed to pick up a couple of Franklin County species. An hour and a half later despite, or more accurately because of, the late hour we added two Columbia County species as well - first a Great-horned Owl l+ then a Western Screech Owl l+. I have to give Darchelle credit for those two species; had it been up to me we would have gone straight to the hotel.

7/14/2023   Garfield County completed  (link to here)
Darchelle and I made it close to 100 species in Garfield County back in March after birding for the first time there in June 2018 and adding a few more in 2021 and 2022 while in pursuit of a Cordilleran Flycatcher. Today we returned to the county to finish the job. Andy and Ellen completed the county two weeks ago while we were over in Mason County. This weekend we are here and they are there, both of us trying to complete our county lists while the summer birds are still singing. Conditions are more challenging now with temperatures in the mid-90s on both sides of the Cascades but we nonetheless managed to find birds.
As always, an earlier start would have been preferable but we'd done a little owling yesterday evening before checking in to our room at the historic Weinhard Hotel + in Dayton. The hotel might not have been quite as comfortable as the Best Western a few doors down the street - the toilet in particular was too low for me to use though the bed was just right - but the ambience was considerably more charming and the prices were comparable. We also took time in the morning to procure coffee (respectable) and breakfast (delicious) to go from Locally Nourished + before hitting the road to Pomeroy.
I did not have a clear plan as to how to proceed. Andy gave us some tips on Columbia County yesterday afternoon on the phone but we got disconnected before we could talk much about Garfield County. I only needed a couple of species but Darchelle needed about 20 so we had to be at least a little smart about finding birds, especially since our first checklist l+ didn't start till 10:30 AM. In Pomeroy we turned onto South 15th St which turned into Peola Road which followed Peola Creek up a canyon and onto a gently sloping plateau mostly planted to wheat. I wanted to sample the birds in the strip of willow trees and bushes in the canyon so we found a side road and did a checklist l+. The Cliff Swallows which flew over were new, and were probably not Barn Swallows, but the most interesting birds there were Brown-headed Cowbirds, over 100 of them, which flushed from one of the willow trees and flew overhead in waves headed up the canyon. Most of them appeared to be warm brown in color, in part due to sunlight reflecting off the amber waves of grain in the fields on either side of us, so I assume they were either juveniles or females.
Back up in the wheatfields we started a new checklist l+ with a Mountain Bluebird which it turned out neither of us needed for the county. We concluded the checklist at a patch of Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine with a diverse brushy understory from which we extracted several birds we did need, including a pair of Western Bluebirds. A half mile up the road we made a discrete stop on a gravel driveway l+ where we found several more species in tall brush and young pines regenerating from the School Fire 18 years ago. A mile above that we turned off onto a forest road l+ and meandered several miles through a mixed-age and partially-thinned pine-fir forest from which I picked up only Pileated woodpecker though Darchelle got several other new species. A stop at the Rose Springs Sno-park another mile up the road completed our foray into the forest but we did not find much activity there so did not do a checklist. We did do a checklist upon returning to Pomeroy l+ in order to record a Rufous Hummingbird. We have not done well at identifying hummingbirds in the wild recently so have had to resort to finding feeders in town in order to add the tiny little birds to our county lists.
It was about at that point that things went south. I had in mind going down to the river at Central Ferry because I believed we could pick up several new birds without much effort down there. I was not wrong about that but I was wrong about how to get there and we ended up not in Garfield County but in Columbia County, down at the stretch of river below Little Goose Dam l+. We did find the new species I had been expecting and we did end up saving ourselves a trip out there the next day, but we had both been looking forward to an early evening back at the hotel and now that wasn't going to happen because we were backtracking to Central Ferry l+ instead. Darchelle was annoyed and I was embarrassed and nobody had a good time but we did find four more species to top off our respective Garfield County lists.
We had been planning to stop at Fiesta En Jalisco + to pick up takeout then celebrate back in our hotel room over an order of their excellent Chile Rellenos but when we arrived back in Dayton I was still not feeling in a celebratory mood. Darchelle insisted nonetheless and we both pronounced our the rellenos even better than we remembered. They did not however pair very well with my Obsidian Stout +, making that normally decent beer taste fishy.

7/15/2023   Columbia County completed  (link to here)
A year and a half ago during a visit to southeastern Washington I added Columbia to the growing list of Washington counties in which I had seen/heard at least 50 species. Last March Darchelle and I added another 31 species to my Columbia County list and 34 to Darchelle's list, boosting us both into the mid-80s. Owling two nights ago added two more. This morning, acting on a tip from Andy, Darchelle and I got ourselves out of bed and paid an early morning visit to Lewis and Clark Trail State Park l+ a few miles west of Dayton. The air was cool and the colors of pine and cottonwood rich and warm in the morning light as we pulled into the campground at 7:15 AM. Anticipating lots of bird activity, we drove the loop road between green walls of understory shrubs, stopping frequently to look and listen, but the bird songs were largely drowned out by the roar of grain truck traffic on Hwy 12. We persisted for a couple of hours though, picking out calls and songs between the passing trucks, and accumulated enough new county species to put us both over the top.
Returning to town to check out of the Weinhart, we found Main Street barricaded for the annual Dayton High School Alumni parade. Helpful police officers explained where we could park near the hotel so Darchelle left me in the car to watch the parade out of the corner of my eye while she walked back to the room to pack up. The sheriff, a fire truck and a few cheerleaders were followed by convertibles, trailers, a school bus and a few floats representing classes from '53 to '78 while an announcer on a distorted speaker extolled their virtues. I didn't envy him. He ran out of commentary somewhere in the 60s and as if that weren't bad enough, had to repeat it all when the parade circled around a second time. The spectators had mostly dispersed and a city employee in a white pickup truck had just packed up the barricade next to our car when Darchelle returned with coffee and breakfast again from Locally Nourished.
We were done and we hadn't even visited several of the hotspots on our itinerary so before departing Dayton we drove by the fishing pond l+ instead. From the parking area I couldn't quite see the Spotted Sandpiper Darchelle called up so she drove me up onto the walking trail along the dike and from there we each picked up several more species before any legitimate trail users showed up. Not wanting to get caught illegally driving on the trail, I urged that we move on and so we did, escaping Columbia County without further incident.

7/16/2023   Walla Walla  (link to here)
Yesterday evening Richard and I played Wordle + while I ate my leftover Chile Relleno for supper. Even with our combined efforts we still tend to finish the game squarely in the middle of the pack. Darchelle visited with her mother in the living room while Richard and I puzzled over the Mini Crossword + then moved onto Spelling Bee +, where I focused on coming up with a few long words while he cranked out shorter ones, an approach which did not work as well for me this morning. Perhaps I just wasn't awake yet, having foregone brewed coffee for a dose of instant.
As we were starting up the Easton hill between Cle Elum and Snoqualmie Pass on our way home an adult Northern Goshawk glided across the road at a eye-level a few car lengths in front of us. It was gone in less than a second but will not be forgotten; we have been looking for one to do that in that section on the freeway for the past 8 years.

7/19/2023   Puffins and Peeps  (link to here)
A puffin pilgrimage has been an annual outing for us in mid-July for the past two years but after successfully spotting our target species in both 2021 and 2022, I would have been content to rest on our laurels. Darchelle was not. She loves the opportunity to be out on the water in the midst of the birds which live there and she was unwilling to miss the trip to Smith Island this year. She also wanted to get that Horned Puffin again. The odds of a hat trick were not great. Although the Horned Puffin has been seen several times in the past month, most of the trips in the past week have missed it. Fortunately we did not l+.
Elizabeth arranged the trip with Chris Long of Jolly Mon Charters + this year. It was Elizabeth who had spotted the bird last year and we were looking forward to her company this year as well but at the last minute she couldn't make it. Shep and Henry joined us instead along with Liam who maintained their family tradition of being the first person on board to spot the Horned Puffin.
I anticipate these trips with some trepidation despite knowing that Chris will help me on and off the boat and that the boat is ideally configured for accommodating my wheelchair. Without Chris's assistance getting on and off the boat we probably would not have been able to do the trip but Shep's help was invaluable too. He and Darchelle lifted me out of the chair on the dock and handed me off to Chris in the boat, who held me while the others lifted my chair over the gunwale and into the cockpit. For the trip out to the island and back I sat towards the back of the cockpit on the port side with a good view forward over the water. There wasn't much wind and the sun was warm so I was comfortable even without zipping up my green jacket. The Sound is never perfectly smooth so on the way out Shep kept his arm on the arm of my chair to keep me from rocking forward too abruptly when we hit waves. Chris did a great job driving as always, making the ride as smooth as possible. Overall it was probably the easiest and most comfortable trip of the past three years.
We had good views of the bird and close-up encounters with most of the other species out there too, including a Sea Otter. The Horned Puffin was perhaps 200 yards east of the northern point of the island and perhaps half again as far from our boat when Liam first found it. As far as we could tell it was almost exactly the same place we found it two years ago. After we carefully motored over for a closer view, it flew west and appeared to perhaps land briefly right below the top of the bluff on the west side of the point before flying back north and landing on the water maybe 300 yards offshore. Its new location was not far from where Elizabeth first spotted it last year. Both we and another boat headed for it and had pretty good views before it took off again, flew right between the two boats and landed in roughly the same area as where we had first seen it.
Darchelle and I did some shorebirding both on the way up to Anacortes and on the way back home. The summer southbound migration of adult sandpipers is underway and we found lots of peeps and Long-billed Dowitchers at both Eide Road and Channel Drive. At Eide Road we wheeled out the dike but the tide was a little too low and most of the birds were too distant to identify. We hit the tide perfectly at Channel Drive but at that location as well the birds are too distant for me to see them and for Darchelle to photograph them as well as we each would like. Summer peeps all look alike so it was good for us to get our feet wet figuring out how to identify them again.
On the way home we stopped at Snow Goose Produce + on Fir Island wHere Darchelle picked up sea scallops, Brazilian coffee, Mango salsa, blueberries, raspberries and a loaf of whole wheat bread. To celebrate of our Horned Puffin hat trick, she seared the scallops for supper along with pasta in a mushroom cream sauce and steamed okra. I drank half a Bodhizava + and we stayed up until 2 AM watching Episodes 109-113 of Suits +.

7/24/2023   Swifties  (link to here)
This weekend Taylor Swift attracted over 100,000 fans, including Daniel and Caroline and Darchelle's three cousins and a friend, to Seattle for a pair of concerts +. Darchelle and I prepared for their arrival by posting a "Welcome Swifties" sign on the front door, spending an hour over coffee and breakfast watching recent Taylor Swift interviews on YouTube and listening to a few Taylor Swift songs on Alexa. Our guests prepared for the concert by donning beaded bracelets and outfits representing different periods from Taylor Swift's musical career. After everyone left for the concert Sunday evening we ate corn and roasted chicken (for me) for supper and watched Suits while we waited up for them to return, which they did around 1 AM as we were just getting started on the final episode.
The concert may have been the highlight of everyone else's weekend but mine was dinner together on Monday night. Darchelle's cousins left early in the morning then Daniel and David went for a hike up Snoqualmie Mountain while Caroline worked upstairs. When everyone reconvened at the house Daniel, Caroline and Darchelle fixed supper - salmon, corn and Caprese salad, along with salami, cheeses and salmon dip for appetizers.
Daniel scrounged around in the mini fridge and pulled out several spectacular stouts. I immediately called Tim and Mary because exceptional beer demands exceptional company. Our first beer was Stickee Monkey +, a barrel-aged Quad by Firestone Walker. The subtleties of this complex beer were lost on me; it just tasted like Fig Newtons. We opened a 22oz bottle of 2016 The Dissident + next. It was a very smooth and substantial beer, not sour but sweet and slightly tart with just a hint of cherries. We were pretty impressed with that one but the third beer, a Black Butte XXIV + from 2014, was the one we all liked the best. It was supposedly derived from Black Butte Porter but if so, it was a porter which had died and gone to heaven. Aging had given it woody notes which complemented the sweetness while the hops backbone kept it grounded. I lack words to do it, or for that matter either of the other two beers, justice and in retrospect, we probably should not have asked them to complete with the food and the company for our attention. By midnight the company had departed, the food had been put away, Darchelle had retreated into the bedroom and Caroline had fallen asleep under the coffee tree. Daniel and I stayed up another half hour talking; what we discussed may have been less important than the experience itself of savoring together the conclusion of an exceptional evening.

7/27/2023   Mill Creek  (link to here)
Yesterday morning Darchelle received a tip about a Spotted Owl in the vicinity of Mill Creek m+ south of Leavenworth. Liam drove over there and spent the night but did not come up with any conclusive evidence, which nonetheless did not deter us from checking it out for ourselves. Lacking precise location information, we drove FR 7300 up the creek valley from Ranch Creek Road just off US 97 about 3 miles up to a height of land then returned to the creek crossing and drove up FR 7305 m+, which on the map is also called the Allen Creek Road. Both roads traverse steep forested terrain, mostly second growth Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir and Grand Fir of various ages, but while 7300 is in good shape 7305 was very rough with deep ditches and potholes. It was also quite steep, at one point reaching a pitch of 17° which turned out to be close to the limit of what our Forester could handle. Where the forest appeared old enough to interest an owl we stopped and played recordings but heard no response. After a very slow 3.5 miles the habitat did not appear to be improving so we turned around.
As darkness approached we decided to try spur road 400 which runs west and up the hill from FR 7300 at the height of land. Within a quarter-mile we encountered an apparently impassable obstacle - a deep gully running down the left center of the road. We could have avoided the gully except for a muddy ditch running down the right side of the road. Darchelle tested the mud and decided it was too deep for us. Deterred by neither the depth of the mud nor my suggestion that to proceed would be unwise, she gathered an armload of dead wood, dumped it into the ditch, hopped back into the car and powered forward.
As Siri observed when we subsequently attempted to transmit our location to the Starlink SOS service, something went wrong. Our right front wheel almost immediately sank up to the axle and when we attempted to back up out of the hole, our right rear wheel did likewise. At that point both wheels spun freely in both drive and reverse. We were stuck. Darchelle got out to investigate and quickly realized we were not going to got out of this without help. I quickly realized that all we needed was someone who could pull us out with a winch. The problem was that we had not seen any other vehicles for the previous four hours. Fortunately we had cell service. Darchelle called the Leavenworth police station. The dispatcher was friendly but not very helpful. It was then that we remembered the Starlink SOS service, provided for free for the first three years after we purchased the car. All we had to do was press the SOS button above the rearview mirror, so Darchelle did that. The woman who called us a minute later was also very nice but informed us that the nearest towing service which could help us was located in Seattle.
Some might call that an "Oh shit" moment. I began to feel a knot of panic growing inside my chest. To quell the panic I took stock of our situation. The time was shortly before 10 PM. Someone would probably come by on the 7300 Road within about 12 hours. My ventilator would go dead in about 6 hours, but the spare battery could probably give it another 2 or 3 hours. The car had about half a tank of gas, and every hour that we ran the car would give us an extra 1.5 to 2 hours of ventilator operation. I was too anxious to do the math but I would probably make it through the night. That thought did not give me as much comfort as I thought it should have.
It was about then that Darchelle said, "Someone's coming." I didn't know what she was talking about. She repeated, "A car is coming down the hill!" I could see it then, a light flickering between the trees up ahead of us. It could have been the moon but wasn't. It was a truck and as soon as it appeared around the corner we turned on our headlights and Darchelle hopped out and waved her arms. Two men got out of the truck and talked with her. I could not quite hear what was said but it looked promising. I held onto my panic a little longer just the same. Darchelle pointed at me through the windshield and one of the men walked over to her door, leaned in and introduced himself as Nate. They had a rope and as soon they could sneak their truck past us, they would hook up the rope to us and pull us out. As our car lurched out of the hole, plowed through a few bushes along the ditch then rolled out onto the hardpacked gravel, I just about broke into tears.
We got turned around and followed them back down the few hundred yards to FR 7300. Darchelle asked them for a selfie so Nate and his son Kaston leaned into the passenger-side windows and Darchelle took a photo with her phone. We thanked them profusely. They asked how long we had been stuck and when we told them we had only been there about 10 minutes, they agreed that the timing was amazing. They had been setting up camp farther up the mountain and had only come back down again because Kaston's hammock had broken when he had climbed into it. They seemed delighted to have been able to rescue us and were at first reluctant to share their address information because they were concerned that we might try to send them money. They asked if we had a place to spend the night and we replied that we had booked a motel before we came up here and were very grateful that we were going to going to be able to stay there after all.
We didn't go directly to the motel but instead drove up and down FR 7300 until after midnight playing Spotted Owl recordings. We heard no response. On the way down the hill we discovered that we had not escaped the ditch unscathed. The growling sound we heard whenever we made a sharp right turn proved to be the right front tire rubbing against the mudguard, which had been bent forward when we had been towed backwards out of the ditch. The wheel had taken on quite a bit of mud as well but the brakes still worked. We were okay.

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