Winter Wings The Subtle Coming And Going Of Birds Makes Winter A Sensation For Birdwatching

Late winter sends a chill of excitement up a birdwatcher’s spine.

“You never know what you’re going to see,” said Kristin Stewart, a Spokane Audubon Society member who lives near Silver Lake. The coming and going of birds might elude the average person, but birdwatchers see a parade-like spectacle unfolding.

Robins that didn’t winter here are returning, Stewart said. “Red-winged blackbirds flocked in the first week of February.”

The wait was longer at Susan Weller’s home near Cataldo, Idaho. “They came about the first week of March last year,” she said, “They descended in a cacophonous mass on my house.”

Birds are starting to feed and bulk up. Their hormones are shifting. Goldfinches that have been dullish during winter soon will be beaming with yellow.

“The birds are starting to sing more,” Stewart said.

Something is stirring in Lincoln County’s sharptails and sage grouse. In a few weeks, the males will woo females with dancing and strutting.

Woodpeckers have been showing in pairs at feeders. Nuthatches are exploring nesting boxes and cavities.

Great horned owls, the earliest of the region’s nesters, are already sitting on eggs.

This is the obvious stuff. The sensation of the season, however, is more subtle.

Spokane birding aficionado Maurice Vial said it’s helpful to classify the coming and going of birds in this area in late winter. For example:

“Visitors” are birds from a population that generally stays on its breeding grounds in winter, but some groups or individuals venture far south. Examples are snowy owls, gyrfalcons, common redpolls and herring gulls.

This has been the best winter in memory for seeing snowy owls. From a vantage in Lincoln County last month, Spokane birder Mark Houston could see seven snowy owls at one time.

“Vagrants” are birds not normally expected here, but seem to make an appearance every few years. The hawk owl that has spent roughly a month near Eastern Washington University is a good example. Birdwatchers from across the state have come to gawk at it. Glaucous and Thayer’s gulls also fit in this category.

“Migrating birds” are those we can enjoy as they make pit stops here in flights from winter to summer ranges. Most shorebirds, for example, winter in Latin America and breed in Alaska. Spring and fall are prime times to see shorebirds such as western sandpipers, yellow legs and dowitchers.

“Wintering birds” are those whose entire population leaves summering areas to be here for the cold season. The rough-legged hawk is the most conspicuous example as it perches on telephone poles along roadways watching fields for rodents.

By early May, virtually all the rough-legs will be on their way back to breeding grounds in Alaska.

“Altitudinal migrants” spend summers relatively close by, but don’t typically come to town, so to speak, unless bitter winter weather drives them from preferred habitat at higher elevations. Examples: northern goshawks, dark-eyed juncos, pygmy owls and Clark’s nutcrackers.

The white-winged crossbill breeds in the North Cascades and British Columbia. It’s fairly common in the Salmo-Priest Wilderness of northeastern Washington. But only a small erratic number are seen near Spokane each winter. “Breeding migrants” are birds returning here from somewhere else to mate. Orioles and yellow warblers, for instance.

“Year-round residents” include woodpeckers, magpies, nuthatches, chickadees and upland game birds.

“Introduced species such as starlings, pheasants and house sparrows never had an imprint of migration, so they’re permanent residents as individuals,” Vial said.

Robins are harder to classify because the species is present year-round, but not necessarily the same individuals.

“Most of the ones that summer here leave during winter,” he said. “The ones we see in winter are generally those that come here from British Columbia.”

Some bird populations seem to “fold” southward in winter, Vial said. “They are neither true wintering species nor vagrant visitors due to their numbers and the fact that there is a permanent population in the fold area.” Bald eagles are the most obvious example, he said, as well as goldeneyes and many other ducks.

Considerable pondering occurs among birdwatchers this time of year.

“One of the mysteries of migration can be observed in the Swainson and red-tailed hawks,” Vial said. “They both have the same ecology - they rely on the same habitat and prey. But the Swainson is a long-range migrant that goes all the way to South America. The redtail stays here.

“We wonder why.”

Wonder is replaced by amazement with the imminent return of more obvious species, such as huge, raucous sandhill cranes.

Sandhills are long-range migrants. Although some breed in southern portions of Wyoming and Idaho and western Montana, the cranes that come through Eastern Washington will breed in Alaska and Siberia.

“For a brief period, birds that come from thousands of miles away can be more common and abundant than birds breeding close by,” Vial said.

Vial looks forward to a late March, when the northern shrike will be leaving its wintering area here while the loggerhead shrike will be moving in to breed.

“During a week or two, one can see both species in this habitat at the same time,” he said.

Tundra swans soon will coming through and descending like snow in the Colville and Pend Oreille river valleys. Varied thrushes will be following snowline as it retreats into the mountains.

The joy of birds can be as simple or detailed as you wish this time of year.

“It sounds so trite,” said Stewart, who’s well beyond having a casual interest in birds. “But my life really brightens up when I see the first bluebirds.”

They started showing last week.

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