May 8th - Backroad, Brackish, Backwater, Low Brow Birding with Black

 

Only the best puddles! AND this one! Kevin and I at the grand opening of Low Brow Pond

I've been to a number of Good Places in Klickitat County this year: Rock Creek, Catherine Creek, Swale Creek, Sand Ridge Road, Bingen Pond, Conboy Lake NWR. But years like this are also about going to a Good Number of places, which I have also done! What's a good number? 74 to be exact. (It's a guess, but at least an exact guess.) Today was a day to hit a lot of those other places. 

Okay, but Conboy first (kind of)

The BZ Glenwood Highway was our path to Panakanic Road, and we did end up stopping at one point to scan the refuge from a fine viewpoint. 

Ruffed Grouse were drumming, and Kevin heard Sooty Grouse as well. A Wilson's Snipe (164 for the year list) did its winnowing display, and many ducks were visible from the road. Blue-winged Teal still eluded us! In the first week of May, my hopes remained pretty high at even the smallest puddle. 

Wild Turkeys on the run

Another stop was necessary as we passed a house with hummingbird feeders, and a flock of Wild Turkeys. I include the picture at right, in part because it gives perspective on how fun Conboy is, with open fields and water right up against deep forests of Ponderosa Pine. 

Kevin and I heard Anna's and Rufous Hummingbirds for sure as we watched the little birds zipping to and away from the feeder. We also found a Calliope, picked out by its very short tail, and confirmed by Kevin by . . . the other field marks that I need to learn. 

Rufous Hummingbird

Calliope Hummingbird (165)

It's always so nice to see these feeders full! We actually saw the owners outside and thanked them before heading on our way. 

Panakanic Road 

Outside of just being spelled differently every time I type it, this road has gotten more nicknames than any other road I've visited this year. 

1. Obvious: Panakanic Basket Road
2. Musical: Panakanic! at the Disco Road
3. or PanakaNick Jonas Road

and, since Kevin and I saw birds like Gray Jay, Northern Goshawk, 454879 species of owls, including Flammulated and Barred, Williamson's Sapsucker. . . we added

4-7: Golden Jackpot Road, Bonanza Boulevard, Superbird Parkway, and Countworthy Court. We never got around to actually putting up the signs for this, but if you do see any of those names on a sign in the future, yes it was us. 

V.L.T.

In the spirit of wide-eyed birding, I found nothing new for the year on this stop! But it really was special habitat. A little water, lots of pines, a few scattered openings, and a few Very Large Trees. I don't usually include full lists, but for this one, why not: 

Wild Turkey, Ruffed Grouse, Turkey Vulture, sapsucker (species undetermined), Red-tailed Hawk, Cassin's Vireo, Warbling Vireo, Steller's Jay, Common Raven, Mountain Chickadee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Tree Swallow, Violet-green Swallow, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Hermit Thrush, American Robin, Evening Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Red Crossbill, Pine Siskin, Chipping Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, White-crowned Sparrow, Spotted Towhee, Brown-headed Cowbird, MacGillivray's Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, warbler (species undetermined - either Townsend's or Hermit), Wilson's Warbler, and Western Tanager. 

It was easy to imagine even more species rolling in during the weeks to come! We walked almost the entire length of the road before heading back to the car, but this is a nice backroad that I'll definitely see again. 

Glenwood Mill Pond

We stopped in Glenwood for gas and a little sustenance from the gas station, then it was onward to the Glenwood Mill Pond. 

More Soras here. Like. . . there's a lot of ponds where you arrive, and frogs start hopping in the water. Same thing but Soras. Just all over the place, and scurrying from their hiding spots two feet from the road as we walked along. New at this spot was American Bittern (166), oonkagloonking from cover. We also called up some Virginia Rails, which have not been easy to find this year!

Walking back past the cars, I first heard then saw a trio of woodpeckers at a snag. What appeared to be two Red-breasted Sapsuckers flew away, leaving a single Red-naped Sapsucker. 

This one actually had me paused on an identification for a bit. These sapsuckers can hybridize with each other. In this case, I was only worried because of the yellow on the breast. Images and descriptions kept showing and describing this bird with no yellow on the breast. Red-breasted Sapsuckers, on the other hand, have extensive yellow there. I did finally get set straight on this. Red-naped, even the pure ones, can have yellow on the breast. Nothing else seemed to be pointing to hybridization, so I'm calling this one a Red-naped Sapsucker (167). 

Glenwood Mill Pond

We kept poking around, looking for Blue-winged Teal, but to no avail. It was time to move along to Goldendale for our last stop on the Backroad, Brackish, Backwater, Low Brow Birding tour. We were running in separate cars, so I unfortunately missed a Ruffed Grouse that Kevin saw dashing across the Glenwood Highway as we approached town. 

Goldendale

We actually circled around looking for coffee for Kevin first, eventually finding an open stand in town. Then we made our way West and South of town to our destination: Low Brow Pond

This name was just our take on the humor of this situation. On this same block sat the Goldendale Sewage Lagoons. One of the funny things about this situation already, is that The Really Nice Place we would rather have been viewing was a sewage lagoon! There had been sightings over the last few days of Wilson's Phalaropes, Red-necked Phalaropes, Semipalmated Plovers, American Avocets, Long-billed Dowitchers, Greater White-fronted Geese, and Blue-winged Teal. Any of these would have been welcome additions to the year list. 

But. . . the lagoons are on private property. You can't just stroll up and view them. Some of the locals do have access and have built enough trust to use it regularly. So . . . first of all, understand that this is just part of the normal story of birding. Part of the story of life! There's places you can go, there's places you can't. Good gosh, even I posted an entire blog entry in March on Grayback Mountain - a hike that may never be open to public access again! 

That said, the picture, the parody, that we came up with in our head was this: 

Sorry, Sir. . . you aren't on the list

We'd been told that the birds from inside the lagoon sometimes make their way out to a pond South and West of the lagoons on the same block. Kind of like . . . try the gas station down the street from the club, because sometimes celebrities fill up their tanks there. "You might see Brad Pitt!"

This spot - the dumpster outside of the five-star restaurant, has now officially been dubbed Low Brow Pond. Low Brow Pond did exactly what it was supposed to do when we visited: It gave us a Mallard, a Killdeer, a Least Sandpiper, and a Greater Yellowlegs (168). That yellowlegs came flying shortly after we arrived, supporting this picture that there's a little bit of flow between the ponds. The water is also on the shallow side here, so we agreed that it could pull some shorebirds out now and then. 

Folks. If you're looking for shorebirds in Klickitat County, Low Brow Pond is not a bad bet at all. It's no Goldendale Sewage Lagoon by any stretch! But it would be surprising to come up empty, and the potential for some of those rarer birds to land in there, or even to simply fly overhead while viewing Low Brow is high enough to warrant a stop.

168 for the year! That hardly feels like coming up empty at all. I'm looking forward to searching for the later arrivals once June rolls around. Some of them (Bullock's Oriole, Ash-throated Flycatcher, Yellow-breasted Chat) had been seen before I even left the county!