February 18th - Smart Enough to Get Out of the Snow

Owl O'clock

Owl o'clock is of course a vaguely defined time, much like "twilight". If we adjust this to more specific terms, such as "Barn Owl o'clock" or "astronomical twilight", now we're speaking with some precision. I built my morning in Dayton around these kind of ideas. 

My first stop was at Lewis and Clark State Park, right around 5 A.M. This was before any of those twilight areas - during full dark. I've had my best luck with Western Screech-Owls during these hours. I parked outside the gate, booted up, and walked into the park. I'd been here owling before in January, which made it all the more comfortable. The snow reflected any ambient light, making it an easy stroll. I stopped, called, walked, stopped, called, and was pretty happy when I got a response. 

Of the owl calls I can do, I've never thought that my Western Screech- was very good. I can get a decent timbre to the whistle, and the right pitch. But that bouncing ball piece at the end is a bit of a challenge! I don't even think it was better than usual, but the owl seemed content to give me a soft response. So pretty! And. . . yeah, with more effort than that, and more equipment, and more time, I could have gotten a picture of the owl. I've just always been pretty content to let these little guys chill out, rather than try to get closer and hit them with the spotlight. 

This was my 73rd species for the year in Columbia County - a good start to the year! But I still had some good time available to try for a couple of other owls. 

1. Parking, 2. Great Horned Owl pair, 3. I hoped for Barn Owls 4. Northern Saw-whet Owl

There was a record of a Barred Owl six years earlier on Hogeye Hollow Road. I had looked this over, and this road had my interest for several reasons. The possibility of a Barred Owl, of course, was significant. Even as old as the observation was, it's rarely a *complete* accident when a bird chooses to hang out in an area. I looked at the area and thought it might not be bad for Barn Owl either, given the open fields nearby. 

The final interesting piece for me was the fact that Hogeye Hollow entered Walla Walla County, with a good chunk of habitat to check beyond the Columbia border. I'd found no owls in Walla Walla yet, so this felt like a nice free attempt. 

I parked on the side of the road on Gallaher, trying to confirm that the car was not impeding traffic or impeding any ambient feelings of safety and/or sovereignty of property. It seemed clean on both counts. 

Gosh what a nice walk. It wasn't all that slushy. Clean pavement or firmly packed snow through the whole walk. Traffic was non-existent, breezes occasional and gentle. It wasn't even all that cold. I just tromped along, stopping occasionally to throw out some owl calls. Great Horned Owls jumped on this fairly early. I left them behind by a good distance before trying to call again. Nothing of interest. 

Turning onto Hogeye Hollow Road, I crossed the road's namesake. Given the recent snow, it was not surprising that the hollow was not exactly hollow! Water ran through it, easily making it worth of creek status, if it were to maintain that flow year-round. I left the water behind and crossed into Walla Walla County. 

I suppose that having Great Horned Owls so nearby should have clued me in that I was unlikely to find another pair a short walk away. I still called for them! I also mixed in calls for other small owls, and finally added a Walla Walla County Owl - Northern Saw-whet Owl! 

It came from a bit of woods on private property. It would have been all but impossible to lure the bird out into plain sight, let alone get a picture. I point this out again because finding photogenic owls seems to be part and parcel of Eastern Washington birding. Simple call-response-identification-contentedness does not seem to be a common practice at all. For the purposes of keeping a list that is cosmetically airtight, I understand the interest. I do wonder if owls end up being greatly under-reported as a result. 

I guess I also wonder about the effect of extra attention on owls that are extra-discoverable. The Western Screech-Owl I found earlier that morning, for example, has almost certainly been photographed and/or will be photographed again over the course of this year. How much attention is too much for an owl? Who can say. I was happy to have identified three different species in a fairly small area without much effort on my part, and hopefully with little exertion on the part of the owls. 

Back to Lewis and Clark

After returning to the hotel for breakfast, I packed up and returned to Lewis and Clark State Park. I was still missing some "side pieces". You always start a jigsaw puzzle by putting together the border of the puzzle - easy pieces to find, and they help give a framework for other parts of the puzzle. Several of these side piece birds had been reported from the park, so I thought it wise to give it a try. 

It wasn't an extremely birdy morning, but I did find many of the birds that I'd found here in January - Black-capped Chickadees, Ruby- and Golden-crowned Kinglets, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Pacific Wren, and Red-breasted Nuthatch. It wasn't until I'd finished the loop through the park that I found two new birds - Brown Creeper and Hairy Woodpecker - bringing my year list to 75. 

Find the Brown Creeper! 
This is a big reason why they are good at what they do

Hairy Woodpecker - much cleaner and more contrast than ours on the West side.

From there, I was homeward bound! Nothing productive, and nothing really approaching adventurous. I followed some side roads in Walla Walla, but juncos and meadowlarks aren't much of a story. 

Columbia - 75; Walla Walla - 67

Not a bad start to the year!