A well-bundled group of eight Spokane Auduboners met for authentic Mexican dinner in Brewster, WA on November 28, 2025, for an overnight stay and dawn start of birding at Brewster Cove on November 29. The chilly early morning by the water yielded a good variety of waterfowl, including a couple of common loon, a pair of red-necked grebe, many hooded mergansers, and more American coots than any of us had ever seen, as well as a couple of busy belted kingfishers and prowling bald eagles eager for breakfast. The next stop was upstream and south to Bridgeport State Park where we dipped on owls, perhaps because the abundant American robins mobbed them all away. Across the river and back in Douglas County to Rufus Woods Reservoir above Chief Joseph Dam, we saw a lone American white pelican, a dapper green-winged teal male with a harem, and the only intrepid great blue heron of the day.
We doubled back toward Brewster to ascend to the plateau on Central Ferry Canyon Rd. Birding was slow in the shrub-steppe of Wells Wildlife Area. Even the bird hunter’s dog didn’t raise any upland birds, but the landscape was stunning. Near the top of the canyon in the Douglas pines around the Packwood Cemetery, the steep road was slick from slush and ice left by the snow fall a few days earlier. There the group was surprised by a large batch of vocal red-winged blackbirds moving through the trees and even more surprised by a Lewis’s woodpecker, flying back and forth distressed between the trees wondering where the acorn granaries were.
The daylight was fading when we reached the top of the plateau where we crawled along watching for winter specialties on the rolling fields and basalt loaves. It was pretty quiet but for a prairie falcon out for its final hunt of the day. In all, we logged 54 species, including two lifers for a couple of participants.
