April 7th - Digging for Gold in Kitsap

Gold Mountain

Olympics through the clouds

Back in March, I'd done the hike up Gold Mountain, the highest point in Kitsap County, in the snow, hail, and nearly lightning. Despite the description there, it really hadn't been a *bad* trip, and I'd added one Really Good Kitsap Bird - Sooty Grouse. I was looking at the list of birds I hadn't found up there: Townsend's Solitaire, Western Bluebird, Canada Jay, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Mountain Quail, and Ruffed Grouse. Nowhere in the county had such a rich list of possibilities for me. The weather was looking good, so I thought I'd have another go at the mountain. 

The winding road to the trailhead 

On the way there, I let GeePSus take the wheel. I can't claim to fully understand the labyrinth of backroads on the Tahuya Peninsula. It's a peninsula, and there are significant hills (or baby mountains if you prefer) in the middle of it - Gold and Green Mountains. So, while nearly every society on Earth prefers to align roads north-south and east-west (the Mayans notwithstanding), lakes and hills have little respect for those wishes.

I ended up following Belfair Valley Road, Bear Creek-Dewatto Road, and Gold Creek Road to get to the trailhead on this day - roads that wound around hills, lakes, and clearcuts. I pulled over at one point just to listen to some birdsong, getting my 83rd species - White-crowned Sparrow for my Kitsap year. Tree Swallows (84) also caught my ear, and then my eye. It was otherwise quiet, so I continued towards the trailhead, passing a Turkey Vulture (85) along the way, eating carrion on the side of the road. 

Right at the trailhead, I picked up three birds quickly - Orange-crowned Warbler (86), Purple Finch (87), and Pine Siskin (88). None of the birds so far had been particularly unusual, but mostly nice signs of spring, just to hear them singing. 

I decided to travel light on the hike. So often on these hikes, I pack up food and water and am basically just taking them for a walk... then enjoying them in the car when I return. So, today I just grabbed the hiking poles, my camera and binoculars, and started up the familiar trail. Things were quiet bird-wise, although I passed a family in the first wooded stretch. That was not a quiet part of the hike! The youngest boy in the group had a toy gun that he used to shoot me repeatedly, letting me know "I have a clip!" This, along with the occasional hunting shot in the distance through the morning, reminded me that I was birding squarely in gun country.

Into the first clear cut, and the quiet continued. The occasional Spotted Towhee, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, or Northern Flicker broke the silence. I even had a Hutton's Vireo - a bird I never expect but always enjoy. It was easy, given the lack of snow, the lack of birds, and my light packing, to move quickly through this section. I smiled at one point as the thump of my heartbeat was audible enough to myself to have me thinking about grouse. 

I can confirm - this was a perfect sit-and-watch stump

Reaching the "road" I turned South through the wooded area. I'm still hoping for Northern Pygmy Owls in here, but Green Mountain may be the place for them, and for Canada Jays as well. I still gave it a try, whistling occasionally as I walked. Out of the wooded area and into the second clearcut, I started scanning for my main targets - Townsend's Solitaire, and Western Bluebird. The wind wasn't awful by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enough to make listening a little more challenging. 

As I walked, there were three different points where I heard Sooty Grouse booming around me. And as I reached the very end of the clearcut, I thought I heard a Townsend's Solitaire giving its soft rusty "hehh", like the sound of a squeaking swingset. Then again... again... and one more time. I scanned the area below - an easy easy thing to do here - but could find no movement. 

After a few more minutes of waiting and scanning from the top of the cut, I decided to carry on, feeling confident enough with what I'd heard to call that bird 89 for the year. 

I kept pushing on towards the top... then realized I didn't really know how close to the top I could even legally go. A big gate stood in front of me for the KCPQ radio tower. Another trail continued east and appeared to go down and away from the summit. A third trail, I followed a short distance, and realized that it just dead-ended. 

Nothing on the gate indicated that it was illegal to go past it. I maybe could have used that as an easy tell. But, "Am I allowed to be here" is a funny thing out here on the Peninsula. Yeah, sometimes, it seems super clear ("Please don't trespass. I'm tired of hiding the bodies." and "This property protected by Second Amendment Security" were just a couple of examples), and I'd had three occasions already where local birders led me through gates and/or onto property that looked pretty off-limits to me. "It's fine. People go here all the time." 

And man... this stresses me out sometimes! I want to go exactly everywhere I'm allowed to go. No more, no less! I looked at the gate and thought. . . honestly. . . if there had been a Canada Jay at the actual summit, I'd be able to see it at this point anyway. I listened for a minute more and started back down. 

Turning and taking the trail along the bottom edge of that final clearcut had helped me find grouse last time. Maybe my thrushes were just down here? I walked and looked for something bluebird sized to fly playfully across the clearcut. My first false alarm - just a Song Sparrow. My second false alarm - "just" a pair of Townsend's Solitaires. (!!) The one I watched and photographed made no noise as it perched on a branch. The other one dove to the ground and out of sight. 

They're not the most colorful birds! But my daughter declared that they are "cutie patooties", and I know better than to argue on that point. I don't get to see them this well this often, so I just drank it in. 

Cutie Patootie - Solitaire on Gold Mountain

Another bird zipped across a rise along the hill. I got on it and realized it was some kind of raptor. It rose into the sky... and stopped... and stooped.

American Kestrel (90)

This is a code 3 bird in Kitsap. I'd looked a few places for them already, and I had more ideas I was ready to pursue. But it just came to me and saved some "trouble". This is part of what I really love about these years - trying to find as many species as possible in a county, or two, for the year. You make plans to try to find birds by going places. Then the birds aren't there. And other birds *are* there. And plans change. In between trips, I love watching the sudoku shift around with each bird found and each bird missed. 

I had other false alarms. At least once, a bird flew along the hillside in flight that was just playful enough to make me think bluebird. . . but nothing that stuck around and stayed in the open. The bluebirds were the ones I most expected to find in this habitat, but some of the key elements may not have been there. Clearcuts with big piles of cut trees and brush; lots of nice snags for perching and nesting. There didn't seem to be enough of those factors? But, to be fair, I put little faith in these moments where I try to think like a bird. 

Not clumpy and stumpy enough for a bluebird, maybe? 

The walk down wasn't bad! Using the poles helped in a few sketchy spots, but the sketchery was truly minimal. I talked to one couple about the top, and about a loop that might take a person around to Green Mountain as well. Interesting. Interesting indeed. :)

I got back to my car and enjoyed my home-made lunch. Flautas! Roughly equal parts shredded chicken, sour cream, canned diced green chiles, and Mexican cheese blend. Mix it up, drop some of it on one side of a tortilla, roll it up, repeat, heat, eat. I've been making an inordinate amount of chicken stock over the last few years, trying to support my daughter's soup habit. It's nice to find uses like this for the extra chicken.

I'd often found myself singing "April, come she will" during the trip. 
How appropriate that the wind was constantly Art Garfunkeling my hair

And . . . ?

Red-flowering Currant along the trail at Dickerson Creek

Onward! I came back through the Bremerton-Silverdale corridor, making a stop at the corner of Dickerson Creek and Chico Creek. Here, I looked for American Dipper briefly. It started to rain. And folks. . . I don't know why, but I knew it was going to accelerate pretty quickly. Is it the humidity? The particular smell of petrichor rising from the ground? Maybe our bodies understand drop size, or changes in temperature or air pressure? I saw a local walking his dog, and he had the same urgent vibe about him as he headed to his car. The brief, driving rain was already coming down as I dashed into my car. 

There'll be a dipper here

Indian Plum

I fell asleep to the drumming. I pride myself in my ability to power nap, but this was not a ten-minute job. I was fine with this. There had been no dippers before, so I figured it may give them time to relocate. 

This little bit of salmon habitat has had reports through the year, so I'm confident I'll find them eventually - even if it means an extended December 31 stakeout for this code 3 bird!I awoke about a half-hour later, and after what seemed like a good "college try", I left for the Clear Creek Trails. 

Surprise! I don't know where these trails actually ARE, except generally in the Poulsverdalebo area... on the north end of one of these kinda similar twin inlets (twinlets? Yes. Dyes inlet and Liberty Bay are now officially the Twinlets). For all of the species that seem to have been seen along these trails, I'd better head out the door with directions next time. Yes? Yes. 

Here, for a moment, I'll remind/inform my seasoned/new readers: I run around on these trips (and life) with a non-connected flip phone. Flippy. Otherwise, those eBird pins are all I'd need to get to... anything! It's not that much of a hardship, honestly. It just means I need to look things over and figure my way around in advance. If I have an address, my vehicle *does* have GPS. . . GPS that seems to have been last updated during the Obama Administration. So. . . it's not something I rely on unless I have an address. 

So, on this particular day, the Clear Creek Trails were left behind me. 

See the American Kestrel on the fence? 
Don't take too long looking, or a passing 
vehicle may end your search!

I made two stops that came just from me knowing the area a little. The first - The West Kingston Wetlands. I made my third death-defying stop on the non-existent roadside and glanced at another American Kestrel before diving back into my car. I'm 3 for 3 so far, in regards to not getting killed at this spot. I'm pretty happy with that. 

Next, I hit an adjacent neighborhood that had a recent sighting of California Quail. I drove the road down, windows open, and drove the road back. No sights, no sounds, no people out for a walk. The people out for a walk are the single best way to find quail. Generally it goes: 

"Excuse me! Sorry to bother you. I'm a birdwatcher, and I heard that there are quail in this neighborhood..." Ending with that coastally distinct upwardly-inflected question-type ending to a sentence that is not a question. Garnished with my index finger going to my forehead, protruding outward and wobbling in the fashion of a quail's topknot.

Usually there's a pause. Naturally. But if I'm in the right neighborhood, I'll get a range of responses that kind of tell me which way to go. 

"I saw some the other day that way..." 

"I passed them earlier today that way..."

"They're at my feeder right now!"

This, or something similar has happened more than once. I enjoy the quail talk, but alas. There were no walkers this day. All that index-finger practice for naught.

Point no Point

Let's stop and admire the name for a moment. According to Wikipedia, Point no Point got its name because it basically looks far more pointy from a distance, less so once you get there. I knew of this spot because of the lighthouse.

Not pointy enough?

An age ago, my ex and I took a road trip together. She liked lighthouses, I liked maps, we both liked getting in the car and driving for the day. So, naturally we decided to plan a little trip to see as many lighthouses as possible in a day. This included Brown's Point in Tacoma, Alki Point (Seattle), West Point (Seattle), Mukilteo, Bush Point and Admiralty Head (on Whidbey Island), Point Wilson (Port Townsend), Marrowstone Light (lol, but it's there at Fort Flagler), Point no Point and a retired light - Skunk Bay Light - near Hansville. 

God, the pause here between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this one. You didn't really get to see it happen, but it was significant. Maybe not in time - twenty seconds? - but that was a seminal road trip, if you will. The Road Trip that led to so many more, including this one. Defined many of my ideas surrounding road trips. 

I'm on the other side of a good cry right now. Not a long one, but . . . we cry when we care about things. And I do care about this. Something that we shared for twenty or more years was this recognition of the idea of Sense of Place. If you birdwatch at all, you know of this. You go to see the Curve-billed Thrasher, and. . . it's not just about seeing the bird. You're in a place where the plants, the wildlife, and the height of the sun are different. You're in a place where people have adjusted.... to this place. You're in a place that has it's own unique arrangements of land and water that let you see this way, and hem in your view in another direction. The smells, sounds, the people waiting tables at the cafe, and the posters for the upcoming Bald Eagle Days Festival or Rodeo... they all help to define a place. 

Oh wow, but now I just remembered the way she took my gazetteer on that trip, and. . . foolded it right over the spine. My eyes are wide reimagining it. But that gazetteer received some inked lines, marking off the roads we had taken. That tradition continued. Every trip we made across the state, to every county in the state, was marked in ink inside that gazetteer. Once all of the counties had been checked off, we still occasionally searched for excuses to do a "new lines" trip. 

If you ever catch me saying off the cuff that I'm not really interested in birds, this is part of the backstory. I didn't look at birds back then. I looked at places, and the people that live in them. There's some of that still in me. I really am trying to figure out where the tertial feathers are. I swear to you that I am. My mind is just elsewhere at times. 

------------------------------------back to our regularly scheduled program----------------------------------------

Point no Point! I arrived, and saw signs regarding it being closed to vehicle traffic. I pulled up instead to the boat launch parking. From here, I watched the water with my scope perched on my windowsill. Freshly on the other side of tax season (one where the IRS did not murder me but may have "only" been charged with aggravated assault), I have now purchased... a tripod for this scope lol. But I did not have one at the time. This scope-on-window arrangement has become pretty routine for me! 

Red-breasted Merganser

Birds flew by, including the usual suspects - Pigeon Guillemots, All Kinds of Cormorants, Red-Breasted Mergansers - and a new species, Long-tailed Duck (91). They're a common bird in the county, but I'd missed them earlier in the year. If I hadn't caught them now, it likely would have been much later in the year. 

Rhinocereos Auklets, passing Brant
and a Red-necked Grebe

The Long-tailed Ducks were a single fly-by, and not photographed, but I had the chance to see several Rhinoceros Auklets (92) over the course of the afternoon. Some of them gave me passable pictures   showing them in breeding plumage. 

And the grebes. Hooboy. I had really hoped to find Eared Grebes. It's not, to my understanding, far more likely for an Eared Grebe to be hanging about in a place like this in April. My hopes rested on one being here because of the identification. As Eared and Horned Grebes move into breeding plumage, it becomes significantly easier to identify them. I like ease. But unfortunately, all of the grebes I inspected were easily identified as Horned Grebes. 

Red-necked Grebes

I decided to walk the beach to the lighthouse. It was a little choppy out on the water - duck-sized chop, but I found some distant Common Loons in breeding plumage, and some Brant (93) closer in. Gulls still appeared to be mostly Olympic and Short-billed, although a few Bonaparte's Gulls had been sprinkled in as well. 

I crossed the rocks to take a look at the lighthouse itself, taking a moment to read about the treaty signed here. Important to remember, with all of the horrible events taking part in other countries around the world right now, that we had our own issues right here.

Bushtits (94) splick-splicked from deep in a large tree at the lighthouse as I walked the manicured lawn. I noticed a trail heading away from the light, and along the large marsh. I figured why not get another little walk in? Golden-crowned Sparrows were an easy addition to the year list (95) early in the walk. 

I tried calling for Virginia Rails. Or rather, I did a Virginia Rail quality test. I've got a Very High Quality Virginia Rail call that often gets an immediate response from rails. The good ones. The discerning ones that can recognize calls of high quality. At other times, I can be found standing in marshy areas, making chortly grunting sounds with no response. Clearly... I know where rails should be. And it's not even possible that the call isn't good enough. So, ultimately, it just tells me that the rails here aren't very good ones. The kind that would respond to... recordings (gross), but not to my calls. Best off that I don't count them, anyway. 

Marsh Wrens (96) need no prompting at all and could be heard throughout the marsh. 

Um. 

Bigleaf maple and 
licorice fern

The Intrepid Explorer, and the Guy with the Kind of Tired Legs had a good long discussion over this staircase. To climb or not to climb? I climbed. I had no idea that this segment of trail existed and had to know where it went. 

This was a nice path! I could very well imagine it full of birdsong from flycatchers, tanagers, and warblers in a month or two. I got a surfeit of little birds - both chickadees, both kinglets, Brown Creeper, Anna's Hummingbird (but still no Rufous!), Pacific and Bewick's Wren, more Bushtits, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and Hutton's Vireo. 

The woods were thick as I continued along the path on this hilltop. Most of the work was being done by my ears, so my eyes focused on the plants along the path. Herb Robert, Chickweed, False Lily of the Valley, Red Dead-nettle, Salmonberry, Red Huckleberry, Oregon Grape, Thimbleberry, Trailing Blackberry, Salal, Sword Fern, Nipplewort, Stinging Nettle, and. . . a few things I thought I'd identified before. Back to the books on those ones (but feel free to ID them for me in comments if you can, please and thankya). 

Red Dead-nettle in bloom

Thimbleberry (top), and Plant #1 (?) Center 
Maybe some kind of mitrewort? 

Herb-Robert, or "Stinky Bob" - very cute plant, but sadly, an invasive

Nipplewort - this stuff actually tastes great

False Lily of the Valley

Claytonia...? Maybe maybe? My searches have been pulling up Siberian Miner's Lettuce

I carefully rolled up a fresh leaf from a Stinging Nettle and had a little snack. Fun party trick, and they *do* taste pretty good.

Best time to eat them! The stingers are only on the underside.

And then I hit the end of the road. The trail popped out to a separate entrance. I looked to my right and saw the road that might ostensibly make it a loop, but it was signed just aggressively enough to end those notions. I stepped out to take a look at birds along the road. Lincoln's Sparrow was, I think, the bird I was kind of expecting as an April passer-through. Maybe later in April? I was a little shocked by a bird singing in a tree but realized that it was a common warbler - Yellow-rumped. Just decked out in uncommonly fine breeding plumage. 

 

Out of focus Yellowthroat
not worth the crop :D
But a nice bit of gold to dig up in early spring

And then back. I took my time down the stairs. They seemed just slippery enough, and I have plans for my legs this year. Down to the lighthouse again (past fragrant native roses), and along the road back to the boat ramp. I pished up one new bird before getting back to my car, a Common Yellowthroat (97). Out on the water, the Bonaparte's Gull numbers had blossomed into the hundreds.

I had some light, so I did wander some of the side roads in that area, hoping for a Mourning Dove or Band-tailed Pigeon. 

The climb - from the beach

After that much walking, I naturally found I was getting hungry. I thought I'd try out...

Poulsbo!

I parked and walked the streets, looking for an interesting place to sit down. At one point, I stopped on the sidewalk, took a few steps back, and confirmed that what I thought I'd seen from the corner of my eye. 

Tizley's Europub - Poulsbo

This seemed like a nice invitation, and not a place I would have found easily. Much like the stairs I'd taken earlier, I had to explore. Tizley's Europub served me up a nice plate of schnitzel (something I'd never had) over German potato salad, and a green salad on the side. Yes. Yep, yes, yepperdo. This stuff was the schnitzel.

I chatted for a bit at the bar with an East Coast transplant. Some of the conversation was about the simple things - how the weather in our state is pretty amazing (except for that little blip known as Novembruary). And then we got talking about the differences in the people. Civil, nice, and friendly are three very similar words, but not all of them apply to Seattle people, and not all of them apply to people out here. I think I am embracing "civil" as a good descriptor for Seattle culture. On the East Coast, people will cuss you out while they change your tire for you. Out here, you're unlikely to get cussed out. And. . . do you have AAA? They change tires. . . 

Notes were traded on our favorite spots in the state. Things slowed down enough in the restaurant for the bartender to hang out behind the bar a bit more, and the conversation between her and my fellow barfly somehow turned to marijuana for the next 15 minutes. It at least gave me time to focus on finishing my food! I settled up and headed towards Bremerton. 

In the course of sharing photos of my Gold Mountain hike in March on Facebook, I got a message from an old college friend, "You know we moved to Bremerton last year." It had been more than a few minutes since I'd heard from Sean. Numbers were exchanged, and we caught up a little bit. I let him know I was coming out for this trip, and he offered the use of his guest apartment. He and his wife, Christine rent it out, usually to travel nurses for months at a time. 

I arrived completely exhausted. Sean got me in and settled, and I . . . lord I don't even remember. I almost certainly fell asleep with my Kitsap Needs Alerts up on eBird. Good day indeed.