The Dean Hale Woodpecker Festival concluded yesterday. The weather was good and the birds cooperated by and large. We found a total of 178 species over the 3 1/2 days of the festival. Tours visited Summer Lake, the Ochoco Mountains, the Pole Creek Burn south of Sisters, other mountainous locations in the Cascades and the major birding locations around Sisters such as Black Butte, Camp Sherman, Camp Polk, Calliope Crossing... Specialty tours included a photographing woodpeckers tour, a night owl prowl and a tour of the ECAS Lewis's Woodpecker nest box research area. On Sunday, "Chase Tours" were organized to find birds that participants had missed on previous tours. Nearly everyone expressed a high level of satisfaction and we got a lot of compliments.
Big misses included Common Merganser, Dipper, Flammulated Owl and Veery. All of these were seen or heard right around festival time.
Bird highlights included: Trumpeter Swan - Summer Lake Ruffed Grouse - Trout Creek/Pole Creek Mountain Quail - GW Burn Clark's Grebe - Prineville Reservoir American Bittern - Summer Lake Northern Goshawk - Trout Creek/Pole Creek Swainson's Hawk - Ochoco and Summer Lake Tours Ferruginous Hawk - Summer Lake Virginia Rail - Ochoco and Summer Lake Sora - Barnes Butte Marsh - Ochoco Trip Snowy Plover - Summer Lake Willet - Summer Lake Long-billed Curlew - Summer Lake Marbled Godwit - Summer Lake (5 birds) Dunlin - Summer Lake (very odd date for this bird) Bonaparte's Gull - Summer Lake 5 Owl species (Barn, W. Screech, Great Horned, N. Pygmy and N. Saw-whet) Common Poorwill - several mountain locationsAll 11 species of woodpeckers including Pileated (2 locations) and American Three-toed Woodpecker (up to 4 individuals at Park Meadow Trail)
11 species of flycatchers Ruby-crowned KInglet - Hard to find in this region in summer Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - Ochoco Trip Swainson's Thrush - Hard to find in Deschutes County Nashville Warbler - Sparse nester here Black-throated Gray Warbler - Sparse nester here Yellow-breasted Chat - Ochoco Trip Black-throated Sparrow - Summer Lake 13 species of sparrows Tricolored Blackbirds - Woodward Marsh - Ochoco TripPossible Blackpoll Warbler - Not confirmed but Rich Hoyer was fairly sure he heard one sing.
You can see photos of the festival checklist and the entire festival species list at https://app.box.com/s/w9blcwdus2u7et2k46dy.
Thanks to all the scouts, guides, table help and organizers. What a great event put on by great people.
- Chuck Gates 541-280-4957 Powell Butte, Central Oregon Oregon Birding Site Guide www.birdingoregon.info OBOL archives: www.freelists.org/archive/obol Manage your account or unsubscribe: //www.freelists.org/list/obol Contact moderators: obol-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
