Pac Forest Early morning bird watching hike March 31

Transcribed from notes:
Time, 630-700am Location, Pac Forest WA

Bird watching hike yielded insight into new bird species and their calls for me. Along the short walk away from the pac forest lodgings along the old logging roads birds could be heard calling from nearby trees. The experience was to acknowledge the utilization, and the precision of hearing as a way of identifying birds through their calls. An identified call of a bird provides powerful supplemental evidence to the sight of it when identifying or birdwatching. For example, that morning we could hear a kinglet; it sounded like a very high single tuning fork like call. We never saw the kinglet, but we did also see a brown creeper, which corroborated our kinglet id through the call, because brown creepers are known to follow kinglets. The brown creeper we identified by its behavior, flying vertically along the trunks of trees. The spotted towhee could be identified by its mew call, similar to that of a crow, but very different once you get an ear for it. Then there was the loud repeating chirp of the northern flicker which is a very recognizeable bird by sight and call. Finally, a bird which i have not seen, but recorded that morning because of its call, was the varied thrush. I wrote a description of its call: a single sustained note, almost raspy.

Bird Species List:
Winter Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)
Dark-eyed Junco
Spotted Towhee
American Robin
Varied Thrush
Kinglet
Brown Creeper
Northern Flicker

Posted on May 31, 2012 08:02 AM by robertmarsh