Pacific Northwest Introductory Jul 18—22, 2009
Posted by Bob Sundstrom
Bob Sundstrom
Bob Sundstrom has led VENT tours since 1989 to destinations including Hawaii, Mexico, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Iceland, Papua New Guinea, the Southwest Pacific islands,...Related Trips
Puffins, grouse, oystercatchers, crossbills, dippers, sapsuckers, and murrelets. That's an eye-catching array of birds to fit into a short tour—with the added bonus of brilliant displays of wildflowers and magnificent mountain and coastal scenery. Our Pacific Northwest Introductory Tour catches a five-day glimpse of the region at one of its best seasons for nature travel.
Meeting in Seattle, we wasted little time, as the birding began an hour later just south of Puget Sound. Along the upper reaches of Scatter Creek, an area we also visited the next morning, we were quickly into some Western specialty birds. A male Western Tanager perched just overhead, its red face a tropical match to its yellow body. Black-headed Grosbeaks, boldly-patterned in black and orange, fed on native serviceberries alongside cranberry-hued Purple Finches. A MacGillivray's Warbler, typically a shy species, popped out and stared down the group for a long moment. During dinner at my home in the country, we watched Rufous Hummingbirds buzz furiously around the yard, with California Quail and Western Scrub-Jays in the background. In the same area, we turned up Black-throated Gray and Orange-crowned warblers, Bushtits, Willow Flycatcher, and Hutton's Vireo, as well as Red-breasted Sapsucker and a family group of Pileated Woodpeckers.
Then we headed to the scenic Olympic Peninsula just a couple of hours away, where we spent most of the tour. The Peninsula is home to the steep-sided Olympic Mountains, still showing snow at the top in mid-summer, as well as the immense bays that give western Washington its mild climate and ready access to marine birds. With two full days to explore up into the mountains and along the shoreline, we spent our nights in a forest edge lodge in Sequim, close to great dining.
We had great views of a bounty of seabirds. As we walked the gravel beach at the mouth of one bay, we scoped Rhinoceros Auklets with beaks full of silvery anchovies and Pigeon Guillemots flashing their bright red feet as they dove. And at a tide rip just a bit farther down the beach we found what the group had been hoping for the most—Tufted Puffins. Although only a few dozen nest nearby, we had close views of several puffins in full breeding regalia of immense orange bills and long blonde head plumes. We also rode the ferry across Admiralty Inlet from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. It's a truly beautiful setting, with the Victorian homes of Port Townsend against the blue water, Mt. Baker in the distance, and guillemots nesting under the ferry landing. And it's one of the best inshore seabird crossings in the Northwest, as we saw several pairs of endangered Marbled Murrelets from the ferry bow. Other shoreline birding gave us nice views of Black Oystercatchers, a few Black Turnstones, and dozens of Harlequin Ducks as they walked or swam alongside a bunch of basking harbor seals. Along a fast-flowing river, we watched an American Dipper as it preened.
A morning drive into Olympic National Park would take us from sea level up to over 5,000 feet elevation, with dramatic changes in vegetation and birds en route. At mid-elevation, a hen Sooty Grouse stood at the roadside, then escorted her half-grown chicks across the road. In one tall stand of firs, a Varied Thrush sang its eerie notes again and again, but we couldn't locate it from any angle. As we looked for the thrush, a flock of Red Crossbills perched atop a fir tree, offering amazing views of their crossed bill tips. A bit later, fortunately, a less shy Varied Thrush perched in the open atop a dead tree, and we studied it in the spotting scope for minutes. A family of Gray Jays flew in silently near the road, a species we would get to know even better when we picnicked near the summit. Dozens of species of wildflowers graced the roadside meadows: slender bog orchids, colorful monkeyflowers, orange lilies, blue larkspurs, lupines, penstemons, paintbrushes, asters, carnivorous butterworts, and an endemic harebell—an amazing concentration of form and color that reaches its peak here in mid-July.
Among lots of highlights, one moment stands out. We had pulled off on the edge of the road into the Olympic Mountains to check a flower when we realized we were parked alongside a tiny spring splashing down a nearly vertical set of rocks—the whole spot no more than five feet tall. Shrubby alders reached their branches on both sides of the spring. A rustle of feathers in the alders turned out to be a Chestnut-backed Chickadee, preening after a bath in the spring. Other chickadees came to bathe. Then a Rufous Hummingbird clung to one of the rocks, letting the spring run over its back. A Pine Siskin joined the bathing action and then, in a sudden flash of color, an Evening Grosbeak darted in for a shower—the only one we saw during the tour. And the flower we had pulled over to look at? It was Piper's bellflower, a pale blue flower, growing right out of the rocks, that is endemic to the Olympic Mountains.