Wonder Walks

May 2025

By Liz Melville Photos by Alan McCoy

This week I am focusing on seeing the wonder that is all around me, and I will take walks with the sole purpose of paying attention and seeing and hearing what is right in front of me.

Opportunistic Birding

The “KILLdeer, KILLdeer, KILLdeer” calls from a flock of Killdeer flying low over my head brought my attention away from the chaos around me to the birds dipping through the sky.

I was at Mt. Spokane High School, an Eastern Washington public school that sits high on the Peone Prairie surrounded by the Selkirk Mountains to the North and East. It was a lovely area to look for wildlife and do a little birding.

However, I wasn’t there to watch the birds; I was there to watch a tennis match. I am a newly hired tennis coach for one of Spokane’s many high schools, and I had spent the morning chauffeuring players to different schools around the city. Our players and most all of the high school players in Spokane were participating in the Inland Empire Tennis Tournament, a Spokane tradition that started 78 years ago. This locally famous tournament has twelve events across eleven locations scattered from Mount Spokane and Mead in the North, to Ridgeline and Central Valley in the East. And while the tournament is a tradition that high school tennis players look forward to, it is also a logistical nightmare for coaches, who must arrange to get all of their players to each of the site locations by 8:30 AM.

The Killdeer cries from overhead were a welcome distraction from my hectic morning, and I was intrigued to watch them fly. In the past, I had only seen them on the ground, hobbling away from me with their fake injuries. I didn’t know their wings are the shape of boomerangs; I didn’t know their flight pattern is a bit erratic; I didn’t know they would fly as a flock, filling the sky with their calls.

As my player and I were watching the Killdeer overhead, the tournament director announced the start of her match and directed the girls to the back corner court that was furthest from the school and road.

“This is great,” I thought to myself. “I can watch tennis and do some birding.”

I looked around for the best place to sit and noticed a group of ground squirrels popping up and down from their holes underneath a tall fir tree. I decided this would be an interesting place to sit; I was not disappointed.

As I sat in solitude and watched the tennis, I was also able to listen and watch the birds as they flew in and out of the tree behind me. Unlike the ground squirrels, who had disappeared into their holes, the birds decided I was harmless and went about their business. I heard the “Ca-KA-ca, Ca-KA-ca,” from a small flock of California Quail as they half flew, half ran out of my tree to another fir tree close by. I saw a Robin flying into the tree with a mouthful of twigs in her beak, and I saw and heard blackbirds as they sat on the tall fence of the baseball field that lay behind the courts.

After the match, as I was telling my player, who is also a bird lover, about all the other activities that were happening while she was playing tennis, the tournament director announced that everyone needed to shelter in place because a mountain lion had been sighted nearby.

Another Day where Nature Provides Relief

I was having a chaotic, anxiety-filled week. I needed an escape. I called my friend Stuart, whose place is a bird haven, and I told her that I needed some friend and bird therapy. On the day of my visit, we made some coffee and chose a place to watch a pair of Phoebes fly to and from their nest, which sat high on a crossbeam on one of her sheds. These medium sized flycatchers were mostly silent as they watched us watching them until we got too close to their nest, at which point they began calling “PHEEbee, PHEEbee, PHEEbee,” which I interpreted to mean, “Please leave, Please leave, Please leave.”

Listening to their request, we took our coffee and sat by a bird bath in another part of Stuart’s yard. Here, we saw Red Crossbills swooping in for long drinks of water. I was excited because I had previously only been able to hear their calls from high in the trees.

Stuart then told me that she thought they felt safe at her place because of an interaction she had had with them during the June heat-dome of 2021. One day during this crazy hot spell, Stuart went out to water some of her plants and noticed Red Crossbills sitting listlessly on the empty birdbath as if too weak to move. Worried, Stuart created a high mist above them, and after a few minutes, they ‘woke up’ and started looking around. Since this interaction with them, Stuart told me the Red Crossbills have been frequent visitors to her yard and no longer seem frightened of her.

Before leaving, we sat in another corner of her yard, where we watched the brilliant yellow American Goldfinches and House Finches fly to and from a feeder. These were birds I had only heard near my city property. I was happy to connect the birds to their voices.

In addition to the birds I saw during my reprieve at Stuart’s, there were also many birds that I only heard. They included: Pygmy Nuthatches, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Mountain Chickadees, Western Meadowlarks and a Northern Flicker.

A Wonder Walk from Long Ago:

One of the traditions I created with my children when they were young was to have a weekly "Special Time" with each of them. The tradition would mean that Oliver, Lynn, or Penny would choose something that they wanted to do alone with me, and I would then make time to do this activity with them.

Typical Special Time activities included: going on a bike ride, reading a book that only the two of us shared, or driving the eight miles to town to get an ice cream cone. But our lives were busy, and it was sometimes challenging to carve out time for each of them each week. On one such busy week, I had already spent time alone with Oliver and Lynn, but Penny was still waiting for her turn, and at four years old she didn’t want to wait. So I suggested:

"Let’s go have an adventure outside. Let’s see what we can find.”

I was not confident that our adventure would meet “Special Time” criteria, but it was the best I could do.

Much to our delight, right away, in one of our house’s front windowsills, we found a little green frog. We looked at it, Penny held it for a bit, and called for her siblings to come take a look at it. Our trip was already a success because frogs were not common where we lived.

We continued to walk around the yard, noticing the flowers and blooming plants and finding some beetles and other bugs, when I had the inspiration to look under the doghouse. This plastic igloo structure was never used by our dogs. They preferred hiding under a bush or laying right up against the house when the weather was bad; they never accepted our purchase as a worthy gift. Instead, this doghouse sat inside of our chicken enclosure and acted as a makeshift shelter for our birds during a rainy or blazing hot day.

When I flipped over the doghouse, it was as if I had opened a treasure box. There were long, fat earthworms, Roly-polly bugs and beetles, and to our utter surprise, a salamander. This exotic creature was perhaps six inches long including its tail and had yellow and black stripes down its sides. I could not imagine where it came from and why it was living under the doghouse.

The details of what happened next are blurry to me, but I believe this discovery was so extraordinary that Penny ran inside to tell her siblings to come and look at what we had found. After a long look at the salamander, we returned it to its home under the doghouse.

The exploration, which started off as an apology adventure, turned out to be the best Special Time ever, and one which, much to Penny’s delight, Oliver and Lynn were jealous about.

Later that summer, we found a group of these creatures in a mound of dirt in our yard. This time we had done enough research to know we were looking at Western Skinks. It appeared that this bunch had dug a cavern in our yard and had a home under the grass in our yard.

Recently, I read more about these creatures on field guide.mt.gov where I learned that it is common for the Western Skink to live on the grasslands of Eastern Washington.

I thought of this story, as I am fighting the weighted blanket of the news, and it reminds me that I must look for wonder everyday, everywhere; it is often right in front of me.

A Game: Do You Know This Bird?

April 2025

By Liz Melville Photos by Alan McCoy

Last December, my son Oliver and I went on a walk along the Columbia Plateau Trail, one of the Great American Rail-Trails that runs through Lamont, Washington. We accessed the trail by parking our car near the Lamont Grain Growers office and walking behind the grain elevator that lay just North of the Lamont Road.

On our walk, we saw or heard the following birds: Common Raven, Cackling Goose, House Sparrow, American Kestrel, Red-tailed Hawk, Eurasian Collared-Dove, White-crowned Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Black-billed Magpie, and a Ring-necked Pheasant.

“Would you quiz me using the bird calls on my Merlin app. on the way home?” I asked Oliver. “I would like to see how many of these birds I can recognize by their call or song.”

He was happy to oblige, but the challenge was harder than I thought it would be, especially since Oliver mixed in other birds that he thought I should know but didn’t. It was still fun, and I was learning.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants to recognize the birds that are hidden all around them.

The Spokane Audubon-WDFW Sherman Creek Wildlife Area Conservation Partnership

by Kim Thorburn

Spokane Audubon completed its second year of field data collection for its conservation partnership with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Sherman Creek Wildlife Area in July. The community science opportunity uses bird surveys to monitor habitat health on state wildlife lands. During the 2025 field season, six volunteers recruited by Spokane Audubon did breeding bird point counts of two transects during three periods in June and July.

Sherman Creek Wildlife Area is more than 11,000 acres of WDFW-managed land at the lower end of the Sherman Creek drainage of the eastern Kettle Mountains foothills. Located in Ferry County on the west side of Lake Roosevelt, the original pieces were acquired in 1948. The land is forested, predominantly Ponderosa pine, with mixed conifers in higher elevations and aspen groves throughout the area. Habitat improvement and fuel reduction to prevent wildland fire and support healthy wildlife populations are important ongoing management goals of the wildlife area. Recreational activities include hiking, hunting, and watchable wildlife.

Dave Kreft and Shenandoah Marr spotting a bird. Photo by Erik Shelley.

Specific forest management on the wildlife area included commercial logging during the 1990s and more recently, thinning and prescribed fire. WDFW biologist Dana Base completed breeding bird surveys in 1998 to monitor habitat health. Other job duties precluded surveys in subsequent years, but his report provided the methodology for the Spokane Audubon partnership project.

Surveyors count all birds seen and heard at five selected points along each transect route. Six routes were developed in consultation with the wildlife area manager Daro Palmer and represent habitat diversity as well as treated and untreated areas. Two routes are counted annually so a full cycle will be completed over three years. Points counts collect useful information for monitoring population trends but are less suitable for determining species diversity. To assist with understanding what birds reside on the wildlife area, surveyors also record, but don’t count, species identified between points.

Hammonds Flycatcher photo by Kim Thorburn

Routes 1 and 2, surveyed during the project’s first year in 2024, are low elevation Ponderosa pine habitat. This forest type supports several of the state’s bird species of greatest conservation need, including flammulated owl (Otus flammeolus), white-headed (Picoides albolarvatus) and Lewis’s woodpeckers (Melanerpes lewis), pygmy nuthatch (Sitta pygmaea) , and western bluebird (Sialia mexicana). White-headed woodpecker, pygmy nuthatch, and western bluebird were documented during the 2024 surveys in addition to healthy abundance and diversity of the habitat’s bird life.

In 2025, routes 3 and 4 were surveyed covering a distinct higher elevation mixed conifer habitat including larch, Douglas-fir, and some western white pine. Bird species counted reflected the change in habitat, such as Hammond’s flycatcher (Empidonax hammondii) replacing western (Empidonax difficilis) at higher elevations, Swainson’s thrush (Catharus ustulatus) predominating veery (Catharus fuscescens), and increased abundance of forest warblers. The habitat does not hold species of critical conservation status, but the diversity and abundance of birds identified by the surveyors demonstrated well managed, healthy habitat.

The full route cycle (routes 5 and 6) will be completed in 2026 with subsequent years monitoring bird population trends as we begin to repeat previously counted routes. We are very grateful to the volunteer surveyors who are the mainstay of the project. In addition to contributing important data to conservation work, participation in the Sherman Creek Wildlife Area Conservation partnership is an opportunity to practice survey skills in a beautiful breeding bird landscape.

Kestrel Nest Box Program Update

Volunteers Needed For Next Season

By Mike Borysewicz

In the winter of 2025, Spokane Audubon procured a $1,000 National Audubon Society Collaborative Grant to expand the chapter’s kestrel nest box program. We used the grant money to purchase materials and supplies to construct 30 nest boxes, adding to the ten we already had in place from last year.

We partnered with Eastern State Hospital, WA Department of Natural Resources, USDI Bureau of Land Management, Hutton Settlement, and nine private landowners to install boxes on their properties in western Spokane County.

Mike Borysewicz installing a brand new kestrel nest box

Of the 40 total boxes now in the program, four were occupied by the target species in 2025. Three of these were successful, producing a total of 10 kestrel fledglings. A female kestrel laid eggs in the fourth box, but these became non-viable after starlings removed all the wood chip nesting substrate from the box. Three separate boxes were occupied by other native bird species (tree swallows and northern flickers).

Open country is the best location for a kestrel nest box.

It can sometimes take more than one season for a nesting pair of kestrels to find and decide to occupy a box, so we are hopeful that the success rate of the program will increase this coming nesting season.

This jumble of feathers is a clutch of 4 nestling kestrels.

We would like to add to the number of boxes in the program this winter. If you have woodworking skills, shop tools (table / skill saw, drill, hand tools) and an interest in contributing to the conservation of these beautiful little falcons, we could use you! We will supply the nest box plans, and materials for box construction. We can also use another volunteer or two to monitor nest boxes. If you are interested, please contact program chair Mike Borysewicz.

Youth Project: Black-capped Chickadee

Our Outreach Coordinator Shenandoah Marr responded to a request from a nine-year-old girl for a volunteer project on birds with the suggestion to research a species she likes and write a report. Here’s what came back:

Black-capped Chickadee
By Serenity Shaeffer

What I like:
It’s a really cute tiny bird and it’s fluffy and makes a cute sound.
What I learned:
They have a bird friend for life most of the time.
They live 2 to 3 years, sometimes 5 to 10.
Oldest one was 12 years and 5 months.
They constantly watch for predators, and they make a cool alarm sound if they see one that warns other birds and even squirrels.
In the winter they sleep in trees or under houses so they can be warm and dry.
They eat seeds and berries, they love black oil sunflower seeds.
Usually when they come out of small tree spots they can have a bent tail because they squished themselves in.
They are not a finch .

Save-A-Bird team encounters Great Blue Heron pair nesting In Manito Park

By Joyce Alonso

Herons in a city park?!

Bird lovers everywhere are intrigued by avian life cycles, courting habits, but especially by their efforts to reproduce and continue their species. We are charmed by the tiny nests of hummingbirds, impressed by the orioles’ weaving skill…but what of the larger birds?

This spring a pair of Great Blue Herons set out to create a family. Where to build a nest? Location, location, location! Humans who frequent Manito Park were surprised to see a pair at work 50 feet up in a towering ponderosa pine on the west end of Mirror Pond. In about a month’s time the shallow platform nest held five chicks, which the parents provisioned with fish from the handy pond below. Rejected and dropped fish and parts littered the grass below.

Despite parental efforts, all was not well in the Great Blue nest. Two of the five young fell or were pushed from the nest, suffering broken legs in the fall. Great Blue Heron chicks may accidentally fall from the nest as they move around, grow, and develop their wings. Additionally, if they are not getting enough food or if there is overcrowding in the nest, some chicks may be pushed out by their siblings.

A member of the public found one of the heron chicks dead on the ground below the nest. Spokane Audubon’s Save-A-Bird Team was notified of the plight of the second bird on the ground, and a team member arrived to find it in poor condition, too thin and too weak to stand or to offer much resistance to being handled. This bird was transported to the Wildlife Ward of Washington State University’s Veterinary Clinic in Pullman, where the veterinarian determined it had severe injuries that would prevent it from being able to survive in the wild. Sadly, the bird had to be euthanized.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Eastern Region office in Spokane Valley forwards requests for help from citizens who find birds in distress, to the Save-a-Bird team. Team volunteers monitor a dedicated email account and respond to these inquiries. They may simply provide advice to the reporting party, or they may physically capture and transport a bird to a partnering local veterinarian for stabilizing treatment or humane euthanasia. Sometimes this may mean a long drive to WSU’s Wildlife Ward in Pullman.

As of this writing, the other heron nestlings at Manito Park remain high up in the tree, their nest having disintegrated on one of our recent blustery days. Members of the Save-A-Bird team have been visiting the park periodically to check on them. Their future…?? Fingers crossed…maybe toes too!

If you would like to volunteer with the Save-A-Bird team, use this link to go to the volunteer page on our website: https://www.audubonspokane.org/volunteer. A team member will contact you as soon as possible. Training and mentoring are available.