Today, we saw something we have rarely seen in the 22 years we have been driving the road through Upper Moses Coulee – White-throated Swifts!  We had known they lived in the Coulee, but had very rarely seen them ourselves. So today, we were really excited to see them flitting around, up and down, over the basalt about a half mile north of the highway, where the scree juts out toward the road. They were fascinating to watch and impossible to photograph.

When we approach the scree, we usually always pull over, turn off the engine and step out of the car. We stand there and look and listen to see what we can observe. As we scan the wall, we see movement as something flutters in front of the basalt and lands on a rock. Sometimes binoculars tell us what it is, sometimes we have to take a photo with the big lens and enlarge the picture to see the field marks. This time it’s an American Kestrel, who is soon joined by a second. 

As we sit there, we hear the song of the Canyon Wren, the Rock Wren, a Western Meadowlark, and a Say’s Phoebe. We hear the call of Sandhill Cranes as they fly overhead. Altogether, we observed ten species while standing there.

We continue on the road up towards the south end of Jameson Lake. The waterfowl are arriving in large numbers. We see all kinds of ducks – Mallards, Redheads, Ring-necks, Buffleheads, Hooded Mergansers, Ruddys, and well over 100 of those little black bobbers who are not ducks at all, but part of the Rail family, American Coots. 

At the lake we see more White-throated Swifts, along with Prairie Falcons, American Kestrels, and Red-tailed Hawks in a courtship display. Double-crested Cormorants glide over the lake surface.  

We see three kinds of Blackbirds, Red-winged, Yellow headed, and Brewers.

But the icing on the cake today was seeing two Golden Eagles flying overhead, one adult and one immature.

The gate to the upper end of this part of the lake, the WDFW section, won’t be open until the end of the month. However, we won’t be going there then, as that is the beginning of fishing season. For the first couple of weeks the area is absolutely overrun with people. We will wait a bit and then go back during the middle of the week. 

This is just the beginning of the season. The neotropical migrants aren’t here yet. We haven’t seen the Osprey, and the Herons seemed to be hiding. They are probably up beyond the gate, where we can’t see them right now.

A list of everything we saw today:

Cruising through Harrier Heights

Our North Cascades Audubon winter raptor surveys have yielded less birds this season than in past years. I am sure that one reason for this is the weather, which up on the Waterville Plateau, has been less than agreeable.  So many times there has been an abundance of heavy fog. Because of the fog, we’ve made multiple trips to our survey routes, hoping to get enough visibility to actually count raptors. 

We make a habit of looking at the WSDOT road cameras at Waterville and Sims corner before we leave. Those are the only cameras that are available to help us get some idea of what the weather is like 60 miles from where we live. So often the weather will be clear here in Wenatchee, even clear all the way to Moses Coulee, or Withrow. But then the fog rolls in and stays, and stays, and stays. When we can’t see a thing, we turn around and go home to wait for another day.

There have definitely been less birds this year and last year than in previous years. After we complete our final surveys next month, I’m going to draw up a spreadsheet with a chart to compare the number of raptors we have seen across the seven years this project has existed here in our part of the state.

This morning, we started out not seeing very much. We had traveled 36 miles on our route (96 miles from home) before we saw our first bird, an American Kestrel. Then, within a quarter mile we spotted a Rough-legged Hawk. After that…nothing. For ten more miles. We wondered if this was going to be a “Two-bird day.“

However, once we got west of Saint Andrews Road, the Northern Harriers came out to play, or rather to hunt. The further we drove, the more we saw and our spirits began to lift. Before we finished our route we had counted EIGHT Northern Harriers, five males and three females. 

That made us feel a little better.

Today’s survey:
American Kestrel (AMKE)    3
Northern Harrier  (NOHA)   8
Rough-legged Hawk  (RLHA)  2

Yesterday was seven and a half hours of creep, stop, scope, puzzle (what am I seeing in this flat light?), count, and record. 

The weather was dark and cloudy as we commenced our 2026 Christmas Bird Count day. We were thankful it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t snowing, and it wasn’t icy.

We cover section 6 of the Christmas Bird Count Wenatchee Circle, as shown above. The southern border of that section starts just below Ohme Gardens and travels almost 10 miles west along US Highway 2 to the intersection in Cashmere by Apple Annie’s Antique Mall. Section 6 is comprised of everything north of that line, as far as you can go, up into the landscape of Burch Mountain. 

This year, that covered 65 miles of roads around neighborhoods, orchards, and animal pasture. In an effort to reassure all of the neighborhood residents, as we stop and train our binoculars on their properties, we have three signs in the back windows of my car that say “Audubon Christmas Bird Count.” Most folks we encounter are friendly and wave at us. We wave back and smile.

I shouldn’t be, but I am always surprised that we never see the same thing this year as we saw the year before. When we drive up the road where we saw 50 White-crowned Sparrows last year, I’m surprised that they’re not still there! The 35 chickadees that occupied that shrubby corner last year have moved on. What’s more, the 238 California Quail that scampered across that field last year, are not still there waiting for us! Don’t they know we want to count them again?

However, this year did bring its own new surprises. It was exciting to find a total of 105 Cedar Waxwings, feasting on small berries! The orchards were full of Oregon Juncos and White-crowned Sparrows, hopping back-and-forth between the trees and the ground. 

This year brought an abundance of Robins. We’ve had very few Robins on our CBC in years past, and this year we counted 112!

We love it when we find raptors on our count day! This year we had six Cooper’s Hawks, one Sharp-shinned Hawk, four Kestrels, nine Red-tailed Hawks, three Bald Eagles, and a surprise…

We spotted a bird sitting on top of a cut off Douglas fir. Fortunately, it wasn’t spooked by us as we slowly drew closer. We scoped out its markings: bigger than an AMKE, smaller than a PRFA, the shape of its head, a very faint malar stripe… could this be a Merlin?  When it lifted off and flew away from the tree, and we spotted its checkered under-wing pattern, we had our confirmation of a Merlin! We’ve never seen a Merlin down in this neck of the woods, so we were extremely happy!

After the light was gone and the sun set, everyone gathered for a potluck and a review/compilation of everything that was seen. It’s always fun to chat about the day and discover what other people have encountered. Not to mention… the food is always excellent!

The stats for Section six of the 2026 Wenatchee Christmas Bird Count were 32 unique species and a total of 1,234 individual birds. Not bad for a very dark, flat-light day.

You Never Know What You’ll See

As we all learned in high school science, there are certain basic laws of physics, like the law of gravity, for example. I have come to the conclusion that there is an additional law of physics for birders who are photographers: If you don’t take along your camera, you will wish that you had. That maxim was confirmed today.  Therefore, the picture that accompanies this blog (with the exception of the iPhone photo) was not taken today.

Today was the very first survey of this season’s East Cascades Audubon Winter Raptor Survey project. Today we drove the Mansfield route, which is 94 miles long.

I drive a relatively small car. And because it was full of tires on wheels (that’s another story for another time) and we took three people on the survey, there was not good space to safely stash our cameras with their big lenses while we drove to the beginning of our survey route, 72 miles away.

So we did not bring our cameras.

At the beginning of our route, we spotted a NOHA and a RTHA in the trees across the road. A good start, we thought! Even so, for the next 52 miles we saw nothing! Absolutely nothing! We were thinking that we would chalk today up as just having a lovely ride in the countryside. The skies were clear, the sun was shining, it was a beautiful autumn day. And we were seeing nothing at all, except a smattering of ravens.

Then, 52 miles from the beginning of the route, we turned onto Rd. K NE, and everything changed.

It was as though the avian alarm clock had shattered the silence and everyone woke up! Within the first mile we saw one NOHA, and then another! We saw a total of four RLHA‘s within the four mile length of that road. A mile further on we picked up another NOHA and another RLHA. 

As we headed into Mansfield, we once again looked for the Merlin that we know lives there. Looking around the grain elevators, we thought we had spotted him sitting up on a pole. We weren’t sure of the ID, so wanted to get closer. Fortunately he just sat there and looked at us as we drew up. Definitely a Merlin! We were glad for the find! Between Mansfield and the north end of Jameson Lake we picked up a RTHA, an AMKE, and another RLHA. 

Exiting Mansfield, we headed to the end of our route, down southwest of the town. We hardly ever see anything these last 7 miles, but we picked up a NOHA and two more RLHAs today. We were very pleased with how the day turned out!

However, the actual highlight of our day was something we did not expect at all, and was not avian but terrestrial. 

As we were returning back on Rd K NE, we came upon a herd of pronghorn antelope! We could hardly believe our eyes, but there they were, TWENTY of them! There was an absolutely huge buck and what looked like three young and 16 females. Of course we didn’t have a camera with a good lens and only got a picture with our iPhones. But what an exciting find! Pronghorn antelope are native to the area, but were just about hunted to extinction. In 2016, the Colville Federated Tribes re-introduced 100 animals to North Central Washington, and they have been making a comeback.

Besides the pronghorn antelope, we saw fourteen mule deer, at least 100 swans and a multitude of other waterfowl on Penny Lake, Terry Hayes marsh, and Bennett Lake.

This day, indeed, proved that you never know what you’ll see. 

Today’s Survey:

Red-tailed Hawk (RTHA) 2
American Kestrel (AMKE) 1
Northern Harrier (NOHA) 5
Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA) 8
Merlin (MERL) 1

A Five Eagle Day

Last week, we had a “One Hit Wonder.“ We drove the entire Waterville North route and saw ONE Red-tailed Hawk. That was it!

Today, we started out on the Mansfield route with a very thick cloud cover and intermittent snow. In fact, the light was so flat and the weather so bad, we didn’t get any photos worth sharing. We wondered how the day would go. Ultimately, it turned out to be rather productive. 

Our route starts up at the corner of the Bridgeport Hill Road and the N. Mansfield Road (locally known as Oil Road). We usually stop there and scan the trees across the road in the West Foster Creek Wildlife Area. This morning, the scan produced a Bald Eagle, an American Kestrel (AMKE), and a Red-tailed Hawk (RTHA). Not bad!

Terry Hayes Road is a short 1 1/3 mile road off of Highway 17 that usually has some interesting birds. The past couple of years we have seen a Great Horned Owl deep in the thicket of a Russian Olive tree. This year we have not seen him. However, the top of a fence post, practically invisible in the snow, yielded an AMKE and at the top of the basalt cliff we spotted an adult Bald Eagle.

We exited Terry Hayes Road and turned east on Highway 17. The next 11 1/2 miles are a rather intense drive. Highway 17 is a well traveled road with 18-wheelers that charge ahead like there is no tomorrow. There is no place to pull over and scan the countryside, and if you want to slow down to observe something, you keep your eyes wide open and on the road. No one is going to slow down for you! In spite of the necessity of being alert and quick, we picked up one RTHA, four AMKEs, and one Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA) on that stretch.

Towards the end of our route we went south of Mansfield towards the north shore of Jameson Lake. By that time it was snowing a significant amount.  In spite of the snow, we saw two AMKEs, a Northern Harrier, and four Rough-legged Hawks (RLHA). As we turned around down by the lake to come back, we glanced over at some of the power lines going through the valley. There, sitting on a crossbar almost obliterated by the snow, was a pair of Golden Eagles. One was decidedly bigger than the other, so we figured it must be the pair that have the nest in the basalt above Bennett Lake. It was snowing quite heavily, but a photograph with a 500 mm lens confirmed the ID of the two birds.

So, these two Golden Eagles, along with the two adult Bald Eagles we saw earlier and an additional adult Golden about 3 miles north of Mansfield, equaled a Five Eagle Day. Most rewarding!

Today’s Survey:

Red-tailed Hawk (RTHA) 2
American Kestrel (AMKE) 9
Northern Harrier (NOHA) 1
Bald Eagle (BAEA) 2
Golden Eagle (GOEA) 3
Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA) 5

The Bus Has Not Yet Arrived!

This past week, Amanda and I drove our first Winter Raptor Survey for the East Cascades Audubon Society.  We actually made a trip earlier in the month to scope out the roads and see about some re-routing options for when road segments might be impassable due to mud or snow.  

Last winter, we encountered roads with mud that was too deep to drive through, or snow that hadn’t been plowed. We do utilize the Douglas County Snow Plow Map to determine which roads are plowed and should be drivable. But, that doesn’t account for mud.  Last year we did a lot of navigating around mud and we wanted to create a map that would be accurate. So we headed up to the plateau and made a new map with mud/snow modifications. In the map above, the magenta sections were not drivable and the dotted red lines were where we re-routed.

This last week, we drove our first official Waterville NE survey route, and saw very little.  We were very surprised to only see four Red-tailed hawks and one American Kestrel! Not one Rough-legged hawk in sight – at least not yet. These hawks migrate south from the Arctic in the Fall. 

Last year, on November 2, we saw thirteen Rough-leggeds!  In fact, in that survey last November, we saw a total of 27 raptors!  This year we saw five.  That is why we decided that the migration bus from the far north has not yet arrived. We have two more routes to drive this month, and are hoping more will have arrived by then.

 I think my car could drive itself to Jameson Lake. My vehicle (whichever one I owned at the time) has taken us there so many times over the past two decades, I think there is a kinetic energy that knows where to go.

We headed to the south end of Jameson to see what new spring residents had arrived. When we were there in January, and exited the coulee, we discovered what we believed to possibly be a new Prairie Falcon (PRFA) nest site.  As we were driving south, not far from the intersection with US 2, a PRFA flew directly in front of us, up to the basalt face, and into a hole in the rock wall. We stopped the car and I got out to take a picture of the wall where the PRFA flew. That picture also gave us the GPS coordinates, so when we came back we could find the location.

As we headed out to Jameson Lake this morning, we wondered if we would see the same falcon again. We found the spot in the basalt where we had seen it before and pulled over and stopped along the side of the road. One good thing about the Jameson Lake Road is that if it is not fishing season, no one is there. Once fishing season starts, it’s another story. 

We parked the car, turned off the engine and got out of the car with our binoculars. We could see the PRFA flying against the basalt. As we looked up into the sky, we could see two birds soaring high above us. Our binoculars told us that they were both Red-tailed hawks, and they were being pursued by a smaller falcon-type bird. Eventually they came down closer to us and we could see that the Red-taileds were being harassed by an American Kestral (AMKE). Eventually, we saw a second AMKE and figured they must have an nest in the wall and were unhappy with the Red-taileds being around. As we stood there watching them all, we also noticed three Says Phoebes flitting around, in and out of the sagebrush.

We headed up to the lake. Just as you approach the lake, there is a cattle guard, and if you hit it going too fast it makes a tremendous racket so that all the water fowl in that part of the lake flee to the opposite shore where you can barely see them. So I slowed down and slowly rolled over the cattle guard.

There was a good variety of ducks in the lake, Ringnecks, Scaups, Ruddys, Common Merganzers, and American Wigeons, to name a few.

Along with them, a few Canada geese, a couple Pied-billed grebes, about 30 swallows flying high overhead, and the ever present multitude of American Coots.

As we approached the little pull out that is a WDFW camping spot, we saw an older man sitting with his camper and his dog looking at the basalt wall with binoculars. I had to stop and ask him if he knew where the PRFA nest was. The nest I was referring to was the one by the lake where we were, not the one back down by the entrance. He did not know where the nest was so I pointed it out to him. We knew there were PRFAs around. That spot has been an active nesting spot for at least the last three years. 

The man was interesting to talk to. He was from the Bellingham area and told us his dog was an Alaskan Husky and he was 16 years old. SIXTEEN! He said that in the dog’s younger years he had been a sled dog and had raced in two Iditarods. 

As we were standing there talking to him an Eagle came flying down the coulee overhead, circled around us and headed east. We got a good look at him and decided he was a third year sub-adult Bald Eagle. Pretty exciting. 

As we stood there observing, two PRFAs came flying in, back-and-forth across and over the basalt.

As we watched them, we discovered a totally new nest, and another spot that looked like it had been used as a nest.

As we were wondering if they had changed the nest location,  one of the PRFAs flew back to the old nest location. It stuck around for a few minutes and then left again and flew away.

We wondered if maybe they hadn’t decided yet on where to settle and were checking out the real estate.

We drove up to Jack’s Resort (which is still closed) and to the locked gate and observed that section of the lake for a while. The gate won’t be opened until the end of the month when fishing season begins.

As we went to leave and return home, we stopped to talk to the gentleman again and tell him where we had seen the PRFAs on what looked like a new nest. He had been watching them with his binoculars and had discovered the same location. As we were talking to him an Osprey came in! The first one we have seen this year. He flew right over us, took a nose dive into the lake and came up with a fish! The wind was really blowing hard and that Osprey had quite a time to get up with the fish and take off flying. But eventually he gained some altitude and took off.

As we drove south out of the area we slowed down past the southern basalt wall where we had seen the previous birds. We spotted the little Kestrel sitting on some sagebrush watching us go by. 

The End of the Season

I was reminded of that billboard that was put up in Seattle in April, 1971. It said, “Will the last person leaving Seattle – – Turn out the lights.” If you don’t know what that was referring to, Google will tell you.

The reason that billboard came to my mind was because today was this season’s last Winter Raptor Survey that Amanda and I conducted for East Cascades Audubon Society.  Today we saw the evidence that those Arctic visitors that migrate down each winter have, indeed, left town.

The Snowy Owls have not been seen for weeks. The Gyrfalcon hid itself very well this year, as we never found one. And, the Roughies (Rough-legged Hawks) have departed.  We did see one today. He must have missed the bus. But, for all intents and purposes, they have flown the coop.

There are always more Arctic visitors in November when we start our surveys and migration is in full force. In November, the three-survey total for Rough-legged-Hawks was 53. The total for March was 11. That being said, we usually see Snowy Owls at the end of December. This year they didn’t show up until February 10, and they only stayed a couple of weeks. By the end of the month, they were gone.

Thankfully, the year-round residents are still here. On the three routes we travel, we see Red-tailed Hawks, Northern Harriers, Prairie Falcons, American Kestrels, Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles year round.

So, perhaps, we should leave the lights on for them.