Last weekend Ken Brown, Bruce LaBar and I headed east for our annual winter trip to the Waterville Plateau and Okanogan areas in search for the wiinter specialty birds of the area. This year Jacob Miller joined us. Over the years this has been a trip Ken took his birding class on every winter, and then after he retired from teaching the TAS class our ABC Birding group took. For the last 2 years it has been a smaller group due to Covid concerns. Last year it was just the three of us plus Will Brooks. This year Jacob joined us. Jacob is a keen 16 year-old birder from Mason County who has been getting out with Ken from time to time, and this trip held the possibility of 5 ABA lifers for him.
We met at my house in Tacoma at 6 AM, and headed over the mountain. The passes were back open after the big snowfalls recently, and we cleared Snoqualmie and Bluett Passes uneventfully before our first stop at the Wenachee Confluence Park for a toilet stop and a quick look at the Columbia River. There was a lot of snow and we made it a very brief stop before heading north along the river and up onto the Waterville Plateau through McNeil Canyon. Jacob took on the eBirding task, and by then had already completed 8 checklists mostly travelling. I think Black-billed Magpie was the first of many FOY species for all of us.
Once on the plateau we encountered patchy fog that seemed to come and go as we travelled. Our first stop was on D road where Ring-necked Pheaasnt and American Tree Sparrow were our top birds.

As we travelled the plateau Horned Larks were common but not present in the vast numbers we see some years. The Lamoine windbreak had heavy snow so we passed on trying to walk in for one of Jacob’s possible lifers, Long-eared Owl. More on that later. We finally found our first Rough-legged Hawk on F road along with 6 Snow Buntings in a flock of Horned Larks. We had a Golden Eagle there too, one of I think 10 we saw on the trip, a significant percentage of the total WA population.

We added well hidden Gray Partridge at Withrow, but the real excitement of the day was when I carelessly made a U-turn in the fog on H road as we gave up on finding a Snowy Owl there in the fog and drove onto a soft shoulder and then into a snowy field getting hopelessly stuck.

AAA was pretty worthless, and by the time I had waited 45 minutes on hold, Ken had called the grocery store in town, the clerk had walked next door to the cafe, and Ron, a man of few words drove out to tow us out of the field with his “big white pickup” F-250. He had to first go to his farm to get a chain, and declined payment with his longest sentence of the meeting, something to the effect. No, this is God’s Country and our here we help people.” Thank God for Ron.
This cut our afternoon an hour or so shorter, so we headed down to Bridgeport, with no luck on the prior Sharp-tailed Grouse trees on the hill which have largely burned.
At Bridgeport State Park Jacob immediately spotted the Northern Saw-whet Owl in the usual tree, as Great Horned Owls hooted and an unexpected flock of Western Bluebirds flew overhead calling. If you check the linked checklists you’ll see a trend, I like the other old guys have deleted some species Jacob listed, most of these were “heard only” by his sharp ears.
From here on to Omak where Bruce and I shared a room at the Omak Inn and Jacob and Ken got singles at the Riverside Inn.
Friday Jan 14th we headed towards the Okanogan Highlands out of Tonasket. The usual first stop at Fancher Road made us think we might miss Chukar on the drive in and we saw our first one well past the farm where a large herd of cattle were gathered, before seeing over 200 once we stopped to look around. In addition 3 Gray Partridge were there, but fog made distant viewing tough, and no Golden Eagle or falcons were found.
Next across the main road on Siwash Creek Road we finally found 4 Sharp-tailed Grouse in literally the last of a long stretch of river birch trees. This was another lifer for Jacob, and a bird we all missed in 2021.

Red Crossbills were found here as well as many stops on the trip, along with Clark’s Nutcracker, Mouintain Chickadee, and Pygmy Nuthatch, but no White-breasted Nuthatch was to be found, and was a miss for the trip.
Next at the Snow Park we added our first of only 2 Northern Pygmy Owls of the trip when Bruce spotted one in a distant tree line. One lonely Snow Bunting was seen on Havillah Road. In Hungry Hollow we stopped when Jacob spotted a bird. The other three of us quickly spotted a flock of Bohemian Waxwings and assumed that was Jacob’s finding. They were in plain sight.

No, Jacob was on our only Pine Grosbeak of the trip, nearly invisible in an evergreen tree, so we got a great two bird stop. I got no decent photos of the grosbeak, but check out the photos by Jacob on the eBird link to see how well hidden it was.
My favorite sighting of the day was on MaryAnn Creek Rd
where a big flock, estimated at 120 birds, of Gray-crowned Rosy Finches was feeding in a snowy field, giving great prolonged looks. This is a bird we often see on this trip, but rarely this well, in these numbers, or in such a natural beautiful location.

On Davies Road we added White-winged Crossbill when both Jacob and I heard them flying overhead and we saw them land.
We managed a small flock of Snow Buntings on Chesaw Road and finished up our day with yet one more try for the elusive Great Gray Owls near the Snow Park, with no luck.

Saturday we headed first for Concunully. Our hopes for this day were Goshawk in Concunully, and maybe Gyrfalcon somewhere. Thanks to Jacob’s sharp eyes he spotted a flying Goshawk, and we all got on the bird after it perched on a hillside out of town. Of course turkeys were everywhere and we managed to skip out of town ahead of the real Concunnully attraction, the Outhouse Races. On the way out of town we encountered maybe the most amazing stop of the trip, on Hess Lake Road. It is really just a small road to an obscure wildlife area, but it appears to be a Golden Eagle buffet stop. We had many Gray Partridge, Chukar and 5 Golden Eagles including this one taking a Gray Partridge.

Jacob heard, I managed to hear, and after a trudge through the snow to get closer we all managed to see a wintering Canyon Wren.
We headed back towards our “rest of the day” destination, Cameron Lake Road hoping mostly for Gyrfalcon and maybe White-headed Woodpecker. None of these birds obliged, but a flock of Snow Buntings estimated at 1200 birds was a pretty cool consolation prize.

We got off the plateau early so decided to do a river watch in Brewster and there Bruce spotted this bird.

Sunday we dedicated the time before driving home to finding Jacob his lifer Snowy Owl. I managed to stay on the roads of the Waterville Plateau, the fog was less problematic, and after driving a while, passing the scene of my off-road adventure of Thursday, on the drive back on H road, between 14 and 15th Jacob and Bruce simultaneouly spotted this owl.

After we told Jacob we almost never see these owls in flight, it decided to show us it can fly.

No luck on a Gyr, and after a high-stepping foray the whole length of the Lamoine Windbreak in deep snow, we headed for home. For the trip:
83 Species (for me, a few more on Jacob’s list of things like Brown Creeper, Golden-crowned Kinglet, etc. This is the highlights)
Here is a link to the eBird Trip Report, a cool new eBird feature.