More High Cascades Birding

    As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Douglas county is massive. I just bought some forest service maps and have been drooling over them thinking about the possibilities.
    "Ooh, there could be Canyon Wren there, and Black Swift there, and Great Gray Owl there, and maybe Green-Tailed Towhee there, and and and..."
    I have taken two trips up into the Diamond Lake Ranger District this week, splitting up my responsibilities at home, and have had a blast so far.
    On May 29th and 30th I hit Lemolo Lake, Diamond Lake, and Thorn Prairie. I struck out on Green-Tailed Towhee at the Toketee Airstrip and Lemolo Lake (nemesis bird #1 for me this year) but took some fun pictures at Diamond Lake.

Marsh Wren at Diamond Lake Sewage Ponds

Marsh Wren Again: The best descriptor I ever heard of it's call was when someone described it as an alien ray gun: NEEEERRR, SHICKA CHICKA CHICKA!!!

Chipping Sparrow at DLSP

Everyone can take a good picture of a mother Mallard with ducklings, but that doesn't make them any less cute!

    Part of the reason I headed high this week was to beat the heat in the valley. In my current home of Myrtle Creek the temperature was expected to hover around the mid 90s, cracking triple digits later this week. It was still pretty hot around 4500 feet, so to double-dip on cooling down and heating up my numbers (what an awful pun, I know) I hiked into Lemolo Falls (pronounced Le-mole-O) wishing and hoping for a Black Swift.

Lemolo Falls

The temperature dropped about 10 degrees at the base of the falls. It was wonderful. I ended up spending three hours doing possibly the least productive yet most wonderful big sit ever, with a gorgeous roaring falls cooling me down in an utterly serene canyon of flowers and greenery. My list:

1 Common Merganser

1 Turkey Vulture

1 Sharp-Shinned Hawk

1 Osprey

1 American Dipper

    While I didn't dip on Dipper I dipped on Black Swift (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist). But it's a little early in the year to start checking, and there are a lot of waterfalls that could be good Black Swift habitat in the county.

    The next morning I went back to Thorn Prairie for another shot at Green-Tailed Towhee, and struck out again. But I did get some neat pics of a Long-Tailed Weasel.

 Long-Tailed Weasel

This one didn't really run, it's more of a porpoising motion 

Hiding behind a single blade of grass?

    On Wednesday I drove back up and checked out some rock formations in the Boulder Creek Wilderness Area, which is west of Toketee Lake, for Rock and Canyon Wren. While I didn't find a Canyon Wren, a nice hike up to Illahee Rock landed me a Rock Wren, in what I believe may be a new place to find them in Douglas County!

Illahee Rock on the left

What a View!

    

Rock Wren

Singing Away!

    I managed to get a video, and if you watch the end of it, you will see a bird dive bomb the Rock Wren. I think it is either a Red-Breasted Nuthatch or the female Rock Wren. If so, maybe it's telling him to get back to work?

Click on the "gear" settings button below the video to turn the video quality to 1080P and also slow the video speed down as slow as possible. It's really neat to see the bird flying through the shot, and the Rock Wren ducking to avoid it!

    On my way back down, I got extended looks at a juvenile Northern Goshawk. That one was a lifer for me!

Overall it has been a great week of birding. Tomorrow I am heading up to Tiller to look for some "sexy" target species. Stay tuned for more!