Woodpecker weekend: Sisters, Oregon: June 24-26, 2011

Here's an announcement for a fun birding excursion.

My wife and I went 2 years ago and head a wonderful time... and saw lots of woodpeckers and other birds!

Here are posts from my visit to the Woodpecker Wonderland Festival 2 years ago.

I recommend this fun weekend.

Greg

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Birders,
Drumming up some attention for the upcoming 2011 Woodpecker Weekend! !

East Cascades Audubon Society (ECAS) is bringing a low cost, casual and fun birding weekend to you on June 24, 25, and 26. It will be based in Sisters.

The weekend will be of interest to birders with any level of experience and interest in birds. We will specialize in woodpeckers and 11 are possible here. But we will have a variety of trips to focus on much more than woodpeckers … a Friday trip to Summer lake, Saturday and Sunday trips to a variety of burns, forests and lakes … and early morning trips for dawn chorus and other specialties. All trips will be led by 2 to 3 local birders who are eager to share their enthusiasm for the Central Oregon birds and who have a real knowledge of the local areas and wildlife. Any profits will go to ECAS to fund cool projects to help birds. We are keeping the costs down so anyone can afford to participate. We will car pool on field trips and will have a pizza pot luck instead of a banquet on Saturday p.m. Note that we are limiting registration and use of playback to avoid excessive disturbance to the birds and to fulfill the requirements of our special use permit from the USFS.

So register soon! See the link for more details and for the registration form, found on the ECAS website: http://ecaudubon.org/Projects/WoodpeckerWeekend/tabid/246/Default.aspx

Judy Meredith
jmeredit@bendnet.com

In the woods... White-headed Woodpecker

White-headed Woodpecker, Sisters, Oregon on 27 May 2009 by Greg Gillson.

 

This is one of the primary target species for birders visiting the Woodpecker Wonderland bird festival that was held in early June at Camp Sherman, Oregon, in the central Oregon Cascades. And a spectacular bird this is! It is one of my favorites, but hard to photograph correctly, as the black-and-white plumage plays havoc with camera exposure settings. Thus, this shot in the shade worked just right. And the low light angle of this late afternoon shot really brings out the details in this decorative bird bath. Of course, I really wasn't thinking about the artistic merit when I was taking the shot out of my car window in the motel parking lot. Don't tell anybody!

Click this link for all my posts on the Woodpecker Wonderland festival.

Please read Dave Irons' post on this Festival on the BirdFellow blog.

To see a White-headed Woodpecker you must visit old-growth ponderosa pine forests in the West, primarily from southern British Columbia and northern Idaho south through the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains to southern California.

Camp Robber of the West... Gray Jay

Gray Jay at the picnic table, Abbott Creek, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 28 May 2009 by Greg Gillson.

 

Here is another photo obtained while scouting for the Woodpecker Wonderland bird festival at Camp Sherman, Oregon, a few weeks back.

These Northern forest and Western mountain birds are often quiet and hard to locate in the woods, giving soft whistles. Hard to locate, that is, until you visit one of the campgrounds they frequent. Begin your picnic and they sail up quietly and boldly snatch away your food! Camp robbers, indeed!

Though quite fluffy, these are actually one of the smaller jays in the world. Browner Pacific birds in the Cascades and Coast Ranges of the Pacific NW have more extensive black crowns and darker gray backs than the paler birds of the Rocky Mountains. In fact, these Pacific birds were once considered a separate species, the Oregon Jay. There are more questions than answers concerning these Pacific birds.

For instance, Gray Jays in the North cache food. That is, they save up excess food, coat it with sticky saliva, and then hide pellets of food to eat later in the winter. Do jays in the Coast Range cache food? Snow does not remain on the ground through winter in the rainy Coast Range as it does where the other studies were done. It would seem that stored food would soon go bad in the Coast Range.

Again, Gray Jays in the North may nest in March. Do jays in the Oregon and Washington Coast Range nest that early? It doesn't seem so, but the number of nests reported from this area is low.

Another thing. While Gray Jays can be predicted in the mountains and far north by the presence of spruce and true fir, they are generally absent in Sitka spruce along the immediate coast and instead are found widely in Douglas fir and western hemlock of the Coast Range, with forest tree structures where they wouldn't appear in other areas (clear cuts, alders, etc.). Why? There are mysteries aplenty to be discovered by a patient observer willing to spend some time in the Pacific Northwest woods.

I found this article concerning Steller's Jays stealing the cache of Gray Jays to be interesting.

Butterflies!

Butterfly #1 [California Tortoiseshell], Canyon Creek Campground, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 7 June 2007 by Greg Gillson.

 

Most birders have at least a passing interest in all forms of life. Many have become deeply immersed in butterfly and dragonfly identification. At this point, I have decided not to let my obsessions with birds extend to these colorful flying insects. But sometimes they demand attention. Such was the case on the Woodpecker Wonderland Bird Festival held last week at Camp Sherman, Oregon.

While leading bird tours in the Abbott Creek area of the now 6-year-old B&B Burn, I was impressed with the numbers of butterflies along the Metolius River at Canyon Creek Campground. So I took several photos of butterflies sunning themselves. Except for monarchs and swallowtail butterflies, I am pretty much ignorant of butterfly identification. In fact, I'm not sure what the differences really are between butterflies and moths.

So I present some photos here and hope that my readers will tell me what these are. For now, these are just "pretty butterflies" the same way that some people enjoy "pretty birds" without a strong need to name and chase them. If you know what these are, please use the "comments" link to post your response. Thank you.

Tiny little blackish Butterfly #2 [Two-banded Checkered Skipper], Canyon Creek Campground, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 7 June 2007 by Greg Gillson.

 


Another dark one, Butterfly #3 [Northern Cloudywing], Canyon Creek Campground, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 7 June 2007 by Greg Gillson.

 


The undersides of the wings were pale with orange dots on this on, Butterfly #4A [Dotted Blue (sp.)], Canyon Creek Campground, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 7 June 2007 by Greg Gillson.

 


This same butterfly had blue wings when open, Butterfly #4B [Dotted Blue (sp.)], Canyon Creek Campground, Jefferson Co., Oregon on 7 June 2007 by Greg Gillson.

Pygmy Nuthatches and Giant Pines

A Pygmy Nuthatch gets a drink in a stock tank, Sisters, Oregon on 27 May 2009 by Greg Gillson.

 

It's a good thing the already diminutive nuthatches are not capable of feeling sensitive about their small size. That's because some politician/scientist went and named this tiny denizen of the ponderosa pine forest a Pygmy Nuthatch! How insensitive! How redundant!

Constantly giving happy little piping contact notes, these birds band together in little flocks and crawl up and down and all over the immense old growth pondersoa trees. In fact, these birds and White-headed Woodpeckers are linked closely to the mature ponderosa pine forest.

The bird above was one of several near the bird feeders at our Best Western Ponderosa Lodge in Sisters, Oregon. This was a great place to explore the ponderosa forest. Feeder birds here included White-headed Woodpeckers, Pinyon Jays, and Cassin's Finches. I was there scouting for the June 5-7, 2009 Woodpecker Wonderland Bird Festival, where I was asked to be one of the field trip guides. I have more photos from the Festival to share in the coming weeks.

Pygmy Nuthatches are resident from southern British Columbia, south in Western mountains from Colorado to California, into western Mexico. They nest in old woodpecker holes.

If you happen to live in the ponderosa forest, then these birds will eat seeds from your backyard bird feeder, and nest in small nest boxes, such as those for chickadees. And don't forget about attracting them with water,... though you probably don't need as much as pictured above.

Bird festival... Woodpecker Wonderland

The second annual Woodpecker Wonderland bird festival is being held at Camp Sherman, Oregon, June 5-7, 2009.

There could be no more beautiful backdrop to this festival than Camp Sherman in the central Oregon Cascades. Here, amid the golden ponderosa pines with the picture puzzle bark, long green needles, and scent of vanilla, the Metolius River emerges full-blown from a hole in the earth. The river meanders across a green meadow to the north. And there, standing above the open meadow is the snow-covered volcanic cone of Mt. Jefferson, standing 10,000 feet high against the deep blue sky.

One flyfisherman (SwittersB) recently created this poetically descriptive post and photo of the Metolius River: Metolius River (As Pristine As it Gets for now & Confessions of a Trespasser).

Thus, I was overjoyed when the organizers of this event asked me to be a tour leader for some of the birding trips during the festival. Besides the eleven species of woodpeckers found in the nearby areas, this is a wonderful birding locale.

For more information on the festival, and to register, visit the Woodpecker Wonderland web site.

There are full and half-day tours on Friday and Saturday, and half-day tours on Sunday. The Saturday evening Keynote speaker is Dr. Eric Walters who will present the program: "Acorn Clowns and Red Cockades," a reference to two woodpeckers found in North America.

See you there!