I spent the weekend in the panhandle where, after finding the first-cycle
MEW GULL in Coeur d’Alene, I headed up to Mullan to take advantage of
mostly snow-free conditions in the mountains. I hiked to Lower and Upper
Stevens Lake, and then continued on up to Stevens Peak on the Bitterroot
crest. Stevens Peak is the site of an historic (1975) ptarmigan record,
but no luck on that front. I was instead entertained by a couple small
flocks of GRAY-CROWNED ROSY-FICHES feeding on the rocky cliffs below the
peak and a cooperative NORTHERN PYGMY-OWL below the lower lake. I camped,
on Saturday night, near Saddle Pass, at the end of the Smith Creek Road in
the northern Idaho Selkirks. A BARRED OWL was calling spontaneously when I
woke around 5:30 Sunday morning. I then birded Boundary Creek WMA, but the
Kootenai Valley was shrouded in dense fog under inversion conditions, and
birding was unproductive. Cruising south through the valley, I picked up
my Boundary County-first AMERICAN TREE SPARROWS on Kerr Lake Road. I
decided to try the South Hill area, in residential Bonners Ferry for Blue
Jays and quickly found a noisy group of three of them. An out-of-place
American White Pelican flew over town, headed towards the valley. Next, I
headed back out to the Kootenai NWR, where I found a (heard only) SWAMP
SPARROW calling from the marsh south of Cascade Pond, at the NW corner of
the Auto Loop. I tried to get closer to the sparrow from Westside Road,
but it was still calling from the center of the marsh and went unseen. I
headed south to Lake Pend Oreille and saw a very distant Sterna tern near
Hawkins Point, which I wish I could have had a closer look at (this is
quite late for any terns in Idaho, and the season when Arctic should be
considered). Lots of Bonaparte’s Gulls were flying around, and the Pack
River delta was loaded with thousands of Wigeons and other mostly dabbling
ducks and some Red-necked and Horned Grebes.

Good Birding,

Carl Lundblad
Moscow, ID