YAKIMA, Wash. — I’ve been getting some input this morning from people who read today’s “More sweeping changes?” story, and one of the folks I’ve heard from is Jonathan Guzzo of the Washington Trails Association. And he thinks the recreation groups are doing a lot of worrying about, well, probably nothing.

Those recreationists’ fears about the potential sweep of their dedicated rec funds into the general fund during the budget process, Guzzo said, are both premature and about something that is very unlikely. From a lot of folks, I’d just take that as “OK, thanks, have a nice day” input. But as the WTA’s advocacy director, Jonathan spends a great deal more time than I do in the halls and offices of Olympia talking with legislators, so his opinion carries some weight.

He told me the inevitable backlash of such a sweep would make it de facto political poison for the very people who would have to pass the legislation necessary to make it happen.

“I would say if it’s an option, it certainly is one of the least attractive options for the legislature,” Guzzo told me, adding that it was probably “counterproductive” to those recreation entities to be publicly sounding the alarm — i.e., calling reporters — this early in the budget process. “I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely to happen.”

Guzzo said the same thing Rep. Ross Hunter (D-Medina) told me yesterday — that there is no budget yet, so fears about what might be in it can’t and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Guzzo also said if legislators did decide to do in 2012 what they did in 2009, when the NOVA and marine accounts were swept into the general fund to prevent the impending closure of dozens of state parks, would generate “a lot of heat from a lot of people — including Washington Trails Association.”

“We would fight it,” Guzzo said, noting that NOVA funds help maintain trails that are popular not only with motorized users, but with hikers as well.

It may well be true that the funds are very unlikely to be swept; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these fears are unfounded, just much ado about nothing. But the fact that so many people are up in arms anticipating the worst is, well, kind of news in itself. That speaks of a general feeling of mistrust in the system and in the people responsible for making it work.

Then again, maybe that feeling has been out there long enough that it’s no longer news to anybody. And that’s pretty sad.

– Scott Sandsberry

NACHES, Wash. — Three weeks before the Naches Ranger District hopes to decide on how or whether to make its proposed spring trails closure a permanent rule, there remains a certain disconnect on exactly who wants it.

That the trails in the district are often too wet to accommodate motorized users until June isn’t in question. Many four-wheel and motorcycle clubs supported last year’s mid-April decision by district officials to close the trails until June 15 because of heavy March and April rains.

“We’ve had several people come in and talk to us about how much the trails get beat up in the spring when it’s wet,” District Ranger Irene Davidson said Monday on the eve of tonight’s monthly meeting of the Trails and Wilderness Group (TWIG), where the closure is certain to become one of the discussion items on the agenda.

“Really, 90 percent of the motorized users are in favor of the motorized closure.”

But the district’s proposal to close all of the district’s motorized trails to all users — “tentatively” through April and May — isn’t being met with a lot of enthusiasm, even among the user groups Davidson is counting on for support.

“The majority of the motorized users favor a closure when we have an exceptionally wet spring, but we’d like to see it handled annually,” said Ron Rutherford, a member of multiple motorized trail-use clubs and a longtime trail-maintenance volunteer. “Some years there wouldn’t even be a need for it. But what (Davidson) is showing us is ‘I want this in writing. It’ll be every year.’”

Ted Micone, president of the Yakima-basesd Dust Dodgers off-road motorcycle club, said his club members “basically agree with what Ron said. We support it on an as-needed basis.”

The Dust Dodgers have a long-standing reputation for responsible trail use, having twice — including last June — canceled their own much-anticipated Father’s Day Poker Run on trail systems near the Little Naches to avoid impacting rain-sodden trails.

But the idea of a permanent rule? That’s another thing altogether.

“I think we’re one of the few motorized groups that supported (the 2011 seasonal closure),” Dust Dodgers president Ted Micone said. “Let me be clear about how we support it: We do support it if needed. We don’t just support, ‘OK, here it comes to spring again, time to close the trails.’”

Micone also said it was also imperative that, in the days and weeks leading up to the general opening, motorized trail-work volunteers be “go in with our chainsaws” to make the primary trails passable and free of downfall.

“If you let people in and the trails aren’t cleared up and ready to go,” Micone said, “then they start making their own trails. And we don’t want that happening.”

The district is in an unofficial public comment period in hopes of making its seasonal spring closure — which last year required an annual Forest Order — permanent by use of a “Categorial Exclusion.”

Per the National Environmental Policy Act, the district’s proposed action can be “categorically excluded” from having to go through the lengthy process of an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Analysis provided it meets certain guidelines — in this case, “to provide short-term resource protection or to protect public health and safety.”

Chuck Hampton, who said he has a background in soil science and is the current president of the Cascade Quad Squad, called the district’s turning a spring closure into an every-year thing an “arbitrary” decision not based on actual trail conditions.

Hampton estimated that on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, “80 to 85 percent of the soils” are too low in clay content to become so saturated by normal rainfall levels that motorized trail use would negatively impact the soils and create erosion.

Hampton said the decision to close trails should be made on what district crews know about current trail conditions, not what they suspect — but that there simply aren’t enough staffers even to assess them.

“(Naches district trails foreman) Jeff Leisy says he’s only been on 20 percent of the trails,” Hampton said. “Don’t get me wrong, Jeff Leisy’s a great guy who’s working hard, but they don’t know the trails’ condition.

“We’re trying to say we’ll volunteer to inventory the trails and come up with a trails assession, so you’ll know the types of trails and their condition. And then they come up with decision to just close the trails.”

Davidson said tonight’s TWIG event will also include a discussion of the Adopt-a-Trail proposal made at last month’s meeting, but that program volunteers would need to be in the for the long haul.

“When you go to the Adopt-a-Trail program, these user groups that adopt a trail are in for a three-year ride,” Davidson said.

“If they want to adopt a trail, they’re going to have to bring in bodies. The level we have now isn’t enough to maintain the trails.”

Winter walkers on the Yakima Area Greenway often mention seeing bald eagles, no doubt the most conspicuous bird in winter there. Fewer walkers bother to report other species.

But if you check the river, you will probably notice ducks swimming and diving. Many are likely common mergansers. Mergansers are sometimes unpopular with the rod-and-reel set because they eat fish — and they are also unpopular as a prospective meal for the very same reason. All the fish mergansers eat gives them, well, a rather fishy taste.

How to spot one: Common mergansers inhabit ponds, reservoirs, and rivers. They fish the Yakima River during the cold winter months. As the freeway ponds melt in February, many of these birds switch to open water on the ponds, often in large flocks. The male is a “stretched out” duck with a dark green, almost black head and a scarlet red bill. Their backs are very black but their sides are bright white, creating a striking pattern, distinctive from afar. Females wear a far more subdued plumage, with dull browns predominating. Their heads, however, are a bright rufous. Like the males their bills are scarlet. Their “bad hairdo” is sometimes conspicuous. Mergansers also have a spiky, very unducklike bill. This is well suited for catching fish. Birds have no teeth, so mergansers have evolved to seize and hold slippery fish with a bill with a saw-like edge.

Social life: Mergansers are social birds, especially during winter, when large flocks form. They concentrate at favored fishing holes, particularly as the ice melts, sometimes by the hundreds. During the nesting season, these flocks break up into pairs.

To attract a female a male swims very rapidly in circles around her, uttering a soft call. Most common mergansers nest in trees near the edge of rivers or lakes. They utilize holes created by woodpeckers or cavities formed as big branches or trunks break off. They also use holes in tree roots by the edge of a river or in undercut banks. In Yakima River Canyon, some use small caves high on the basalt cliffs, sometimes hundreds of feet up. The tiny, flightless ducklings have a long jump to the ground below to follow mom to the river! Evidently, these little fluff balls don’t injure themselves in this apparent suicide jump

The female lays a large clutch, eight to 11 eggs. She does all the incubation for 30-35 days. After hatching the ducklings remain in the cavity for a day or so before jumping to the ground when mom calls them from the ground below prompting them to jump to join her. She tends the youngsters for several weeks but they feed themselves, at first mostly on aquatic insects, later on tiny fish. They are capable of flight after about two months of age.

What you may not know. The common merganser goes by the name goosander all across its vast range in Eurasia, from western Europe east to Japan.

 • Wildlife Moment, focusing on native wildlife, typically runs in Outdoors on the first Tuesday of every month, with the cooperation of the Yakima Valley Audubon Society.

I called up a hunting buddy the other day and asked him if he wanted to go dove hunting with me this weekend.

“Um, you know this is February, not September, right?” my friend replied.

“Yes, I’m aware of what time of the year it is,” I said. “So are you up for it?”

My buddy answered my question with a question. “What, are you wanting to go to Mexico or Argentina or someplace like that?”

“Sure, I’d like to go shoot doves in one of those places,” I said. “But I can’t take the time off of work, so I’m headed to the Lower Valley. You in?”

“I’d just as soon not get arrested for hunting doves out of season, so I think I’ll pass,” my friend said and then mumbled something about me drinking my bathwater.

“No, no, no, we wouldn’t be hunting mourning doves,” I said to my skeptical friend. “We’d be hunting Eurasian collared doves.”

I went on to explain to my buddy the fairly new arrivals to our Valley are actually an invasive species in the state and aren’t considered a game bird. That being the case, there are no regulations against hunting them. In fact, both the State of Washington and the Yakama Nation would just as soon hunters remove as many of the doves as they can so they don’t move in and compete with our native dove populations.

Unfortunately, that train has already left the station. The way the collared doves have multiplied in such a short time, they will most likely be with us for a long, long time.

Larger than a mourning dove, grayish white in color, with the trademark dark collar on the back of their neck, the Eurasian collared dove has become very visible around the Yakima Valley. The birds first showed up about five or six years ago and today they are found in all parts of the region, their population growing by leaps and bounds.

So how did the new doves end up in Central Washington? Well, they flew here, of course — but not from Asia. They were introduced into the Bahamas in the mid-1970s and moved into Florida a short time later. Over the next couple of decades the doves kept moving north and west, colonizing along the way. Local biologists believe our new resident doves arrived from the east, via the Dakotas and Montana.

Unlike their cousins, the mourning doves, Eurasian collared doves are not migratory. Once here, they’re here. And they are very prolific. They can and do nest throughout the year, and some pairs will breed, nest and hatch broods up to six times a year.

The doves feed in some of the same areas as mourning doves, but seem to be more attracted to human habitation. You see them frequently around farm houses and are now even more visible in the cities. In fact, if you are a bird feeder, chances are you have seen some of the doves become regular visitors.

But they also feed in grain fields in the agricultural areas of the Valley and that is where a hunter can get a crack at them. A little scouting will help. Watch for the birds in tilled wheat fields and then set up and wait. If there are any good trees near the fields, all the better.

Make sure the birds you are targeting are the bigger collared version, however. Even though most mourning doves migrate south in the winter, there are still some around. Once you see the two doves together, the Eurasians are fairly easy to distinguish. They fly more like pigeons, and are noticeably whiter than a mourning dove.

Besides the benefit of hunting the new resident doves all year long, the birds are also good to eat. Again, being bigger than a mourning dove, the collared dove provides more meat, and although the meat is darker than that of its smaller cousin, it is very flavorful.

One of these days I would like to take a week during the spring and head to South America for one of their famous dove-hunting extravaganzas. In the meantime, however, I think I’ll just extend my hunting season locally and keep plinking away at the collared doves that have shown up here uninvited.

And, unless I can talk my hunting buddy in to going with me, it looks like I might be out there on my own. That’s okay. Hunting doves in February is a bonus and can be great fun, no matter who is hunting with you.

• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

Hunters get better multi-season odds

Hunters will have a better chance at being drawn for a multi-season deer or elk permit, after Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted last weekend to increase the number of permits it will issue each year to hunters.

The commission approved Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s staff proposal to increase multi-season deer permits from its current maximum of 4,000 up to 8,500. Multi-season elk permits will go up from 850 to 1,250. The permits allow permit holders to participate in any or all general hunting seasons for deer or elk, instead of having to decide among modern firearm, muzzleloader or archery. The multi-season permits are awarded through annual drawings.

In other action last weekend, the commission adopted 2012-13 fishing rules that will, among other things:

• Move the lowland lake fishing season opener from the last Saturday in April to the fourth Saturday in April.

• Limit sturgeon retention in the Puget Sound and tributaries to the month of June and Sept. 1-Oct. 15, to minimize take of Columbia River sturgeon that venture out into the Puget Sound to feed. Catch-and-release fishing will be still allowed year-round.

• Close early-season (January and February) fishing for steelhead and other game fish in several westside river systems and along the Strait of Juan de Fuca to protect wild steelhead.

Summaries of the rule changes will be available later this month on the WDFW website.

Still spots available in hunter-ed classes

Since the WDFW has gone to strictly online registration for its hunter education classes, some local classes aren’t filling up nearly as fast as they used to.

That means prospective young hunters can now get into classes that used to be filled up almost before they were even publicized.

Two classes coming up in the next couple of weeks — one in Kittitas County beginning Feb. 16 and one beginning Feb. 20 in Selah — both have plenty of spots available.

You just have to sign up in advance online, because walk-ups on the first day of the class are not allowed. To sign up, go to wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/huntered/ — then click on basic hunting, then on online registration and pick the class you want on the site’s scheduling calendar.

Gold Creek logging to limit snowmobilers

Winter logging operations will create some early-week limitations this winter season for snowmobilers using the Gold Creek Sno-Park (Forest Road 1705) off State Route 410 near Cliffdell.

Beginning today, logging trucks will be hauling timber out of the area under specific timelines requiring the operation to be done with significant snowpack to minimize resource damage.

To keep snowmobilers and loggers from getting in each others’ way, snowmobilers will have trail access from 3 p.m. Thursdays to early Friday morning, and then after 3 p.m. Friday through the weekend. Logging operations will renew each Monday morning.

Because several units are being logged and the logging hours are also being limited, the restrictions are expected to be in place all winter.

BIRD ALERT

Because of its name, the common redpoll is a species that just might be dismissed by new birders. If they are common birds, they can’t be very exciting, right?

Wrong. What’s common in one part of the country may not be so common in another, and around here redpolls are a rare winter visitor early sought by birders — many of whom, lately, are getting their wish.

Common redpolls have been spotted actively feeding on alder cones along Umptanum Creek. A few common redpolls were hanging out with a group of American goldfinches, house finches, and pine siskins on the Iron Horse Trail. One common redpoll was among the pine siskins at a feeder just north of 51st and Englewood.

If you have the good fortune of encountering a flock of common redpolls, be on the lookout for the hoary redpoll. The hoary is a common redpoll look-alike but with a pale or “frosty” appearance. Be aware that separating a hoary from a common is challenging even for expert bird-watchers and are far less likely to visit our region than their “common” cousins. One possible hoary redpoll was noted in the flock along Umptanum Creek this week.

Also of note, 11 people joined the Thursday morning bird walk along the Poppoff Trail on the Greenway this week and found 32 species of birds. Thousands of robins were observed in the fields and trees along South Emerald Road southeast of Granger.

Call bird sightings in to the Yakima Valley Audubon phone line at 509-248-1963.

AROUND AND ABOUT

BUTTON SHOOT: Beautiful weather for the sixth week of the Yakima Valley Sportsmen’s W.K. Button Shoot brought some 70 shooters to the Pomona range. Kerry Jorgensen had the lone 25×25 round to take home the men’s button, with Mark McDaniel and Alan Eims also coming away with buttons after breaking 24 each. Chuck Stivers topped the seniors with a 24, and new shooter Maren Nelson took the button in the women’s division.

EQUINE CLASS: A unique class in “equine management and psychology” will begin Feb. 27 at Yakima Valley Community College, with 7-9 p.m. evening class sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays over two weeks (Feb. 27 and 29, March 5 and 7). Student fee is $50. To register, call YVCC at 574-4700 or go to www.yvcc.edu/agriculture. For more info, call instructor Don Witke at 509-697-6378.

BURN BAN LIFTED: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 10 lifted its outdoor burning ban for the Yakama Reservation — along with the Puyallup, Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Colville, Spokane and Chehalis reservations — effective 10 a.m. today.

ON THE CALENDAR

THURSDAY: The Cascadian Pokies will go (as scheduled) to Cowiche Canyon, but because of trail conditions will do a “snow walk” instead of a cross-country ski or snowshoe trek. For meeting time and place, call Marion Mann at 452-4263. Non-snow types can call Jeanne Crawford at 509-966-8608 for an alternate outing.

A NOTE: It’s a slow week for Cascadian outings because of a group club event. Expect the regular insane energy levels to return next week.

YAKIMA, Wash. — Since the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has gone to strictly online registration for its hunter education classes, some local classes aren’t filling up nearly as fast as they used to. Classes that used to fill up within a day after the old routine — announcing them in the local newspaper with a phone number to call and schedule — are coming and going with room to spare.

Case in point: There’s a hunter ed class beginning Saturday in Selah taught by experienced pro Lance Cussons, and as of 3 p.m. Thursday there were still seven spots remaining. That just never happens, and typically a young prospective hunter hoping to get into one of these mandatory classes has to plan well in advance.

So if you’re looking for a class, here’s where you can sign up. From there, you click on the online registration link; that will take you to the calendar page, and if you want to join the class beginning Saturday, just click on that date and go from there. You’ll also find a Kittitas County class beginning Feb. 16 and another Yakima County class, taught by Dave Pittman, that will get under way on Feb. 20. (There are two other classes starting that same day, so don’t be confused; just click on the date and make your selection.)

Oh, and if you’re a hunter ed instructor wanting to let folks know you’ve got a class coming up, you can always still call your local newspaper to get the word out. We still do that sort of thing.

– Scott Sandsberry

YAKIMA, Wash. — One year after sport fishermen pulled out a record number of hatchery spring chinook salmon from the Yakima River, state fish managers and the people who predict fish runs are cautiously optimistic for an even bigger year in 2012.

Some of them, anyway.

While the NOAA Fisheries Service has predicted a mainstem Columbia River run of 160,000, the state and tribal representatives on the U.S. vs. Oregon Technical Advisory Commission (TAC) are significantly more optimistic.

TAC’s forecast of 314,200 upriver springers would be the fourth-largest on record, meaning the popular Columbia and tributary spots so popular with Yakima-area anglers — like Drano Lake and the mouths of the White Salmon and Klickitat rivers — may be even busier than usual.

As for the Yakima, things could be really good … or even better than that.

“The forecast is for 12,040 fish, and of that, 5,680 are the Cle Elum hatchery fish. That’s a good return,” said John Easterbrooks, regional fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The (2011 spring chinook) forecast was lower than that — it was 10,320 — and we ended up with 13,400 adults to the mouth of the Yakima.”

Thanks in part to the popular Boundary Reach bordering the Yakama Reservation being open for last year’s spring chinook fishery, sport anglers on the Yakima River reeled in 1,579 hatchery-origin adults and jacks. That harvest was the highest on record, exceeding even the 2001 season when a phenomenal run of 21,220 to the Yakima resulted in a 1,252-hatchery fish catch — a total which wasn’t exceeded until last year.

And the 2012 run to the Yakima could easily surpass the 12,040 prognostication, much as the 2011 forecast did, said Bill Bosch, data manager for Yakima Klickitat Fisheries Project.

“There’s some reason to be optimistic that we’re being nicely conservative,” Bosch said. “Things could come in better than forecast.”

Bosch’s reasoning is based on some changes he’s made to his forecast model for the Yakima River.

Previously, YKFP forecasts gave greater credence to jack abundance, but Bosch noted that “over the last 10 years or so, the jack counts haven’t quite panned out as a strong predictor. There’s been some years where we’ve ended up with egg on our faces after having these optimistic prognostications and then the actual runs have come in much lower than expected.”

Beginning in 2010, Bosch began giving greater weight to such factors as smolt estimates at the Chandler facility at Prosser, juvenile survival estimates for natural and hatchery-origin fish from Roza to McNary and ocean conditions. Using all of those factors, Bosch said, would call for a projected return of 16,790 age-4 spring chinook and 1,260 age-5 fish for a total return of 18,050 adult springers to the mouth of the Yakima.

Given the unpredictable relationship of jack counts to age-4 returns in recent years, though, Bosch’s prediction model for the 2012 run took into account the average over-forecast errors of recent years and came up with the 12,040.

But, of course, that 18,050 number is still out there as a possibility. Better to be conservative and be pleasantly surprised, Bosch said, than predict a great year and then be disappointed by a good year.

“It’s a lot harder to cut fisheries back if you overforecast,” Bosch said, “than it is to expand them if you underforecast.”

The 314,200 forecast for upriver spring chinook in the Columbia far surpasses the 2011 projection of 198,400, and the lower river is already open to boat and bank anglers on a daily basis from Buoy 10 near the mouth upstream to the Interstate 5 bridge.

Under the new rules adopted last week, the sport fishery will expand March 1 upriver to Beacon Rock, where it will run through April 6 except for three Tuesday closures (March 20, March 27 and April 3) to accommodate commercial fisheries.

The Columbia will open to boat and bank anglers above Bonneville Dam on a daily basis March 16 through May 2.

Harvest guidelines on sturgeon fisheries in the lower Columbia will entail a 38-percent reduction from last year, with this year’s catch being limited to 9,600. This reduction follows 30- and 40-percent reductions in each of the last two years, in response to a decline of nearly 50 percent of legal-size white sturgeon since 2003.

YAKIMA, Wash. — As far as Mark Herke is concerned, the occasional cougar was bad enough. He’s lost cattle on his Ahtanum ranch in 2005, 2007 and 2010 — a bull and a cow the first year, a calf in each of the latter two, each time killed by a cougar.

But a cougar, he said, “is happier to get the deer.” And it hunts alone.

Wolves are pack hunters. “That,” Herke said, “is a hellacious tool.

“This wolf is not going to be a game-changer. It’s going to be game over.”

That’s why Herke and the other members of the Yakima County Farm Bureau last week came out in opposition of Washington’s state wolf management plan, thus echoing the sentiment of Okanogan County commissioners who last summer petitioned to remove all protections from the state’s wolves.

The farm bureau’s press release said the state’s elk fences would enable wolves “to trap and slaughter” large numbers of elk. “It seems ironic,” the release went on, “that we, as tax payers, paid to have elk introduced into this area, paid to have the wildlife fences built, pay to feed the wildlife, and now are paying to have wolves eat the wildlife.”

The state also pays hunters — by way of landowners’ damage permits — to keep elk from gorging on private croplands. That’s how a hunter and his 9-year-old son had an intriguing Nov. 26 encounter with the Teanaway wolf pack roaming the hills of northwest Kittitas County.

Don Wood of Kent was hunting on an antlerless elk permit on a friend’s property off Teanaway Road when a wolf approached within 20 yards and watched them for quite a while.

“It came up to a bush that the leaves had fallen off of, so it was just kind of sticks and we could see it,” Wood said. “It was staring directly at us for probably a good three or four minutes.”

Wood said he was fascinated but, with his rifle in his arm, was not afraid, “just cautious. My son was standing right beside me; I told him, ‘Look, it’s a wolf.’ He was like, ‘Whoa.’ We didn’t really say much because wanted to be quiet.”

Eventually the wolf trotted off, and Wood’s son, Kenny, walked over to look at its tracks. After a couple of minutes, though, four other wolves — one of which wearing what appeared to be one of the state’s radio-collar units — approached from the same direction.

“I was telling (Kenny) to stop, and I went over to him because he didn’t realize what was going on. At that point, I was a little more concerned,” Wood said.

Still, though, he was more curious than nervous, and instead of raising his rifle, he raised his smart phone to take some photographs of the wolves until they ambled off.

“I had the phone in one hand and the rifle in the other,” Wood said. “(The wolves) stayed spread apart. I think they were coming down looking for breakfast and trying to determine if we were breakfast or not. At the time, I was alert and just trying to assess the whole situation, wasn’t really concerned. A couple of days later, at home in my bed, I was got to thinking, ‘Hey, that really could have gone the other way.’”

Herke, the Yakima County Farm Bureau member, is concerned about what will happen with greater number of wolves in the state. Though the Washington Farm Bureau and the Washington State Sheep Producers have come out in support of the state’s wolf management plan, Herke calls the plan’s goal of 15 breeding pairs “an unsustainable number” and said some YCFB board members would prefer to see no wolves whatsoever in Washington.

“But we’re way past that point now,” he said. “That horse is out of the barn.”

Washington’s wolf population is at least 27 now, including three breeding pairs, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s year-end survey of the state’s five confirmed wolf packs.

“That (wolf number) is a minimum. We know there are other wolves,” said WDFW spokesperson Madonna Luers. “I can’t tell you how many phone calls I’ve taken since that (survey) went out, and it’s always, ‘We’ve got more wolves.’”

Seven of them are believed to be in the Teanaway pack, roaming the rolling hills of northwest Kittitas County. That pack has yet to be involved in any livestock predation, though several pack members feeding on the carcass of a female sheep — killed by a cougar — injured a shepherd dog belonging to the Martinez family sheep-ranching operation based in Moxie.

The state paid for the dog’s veterinary bills; $650 was also paid to the owner of a calf killed by wolves in Stevens County in 2007, the lone verified case of domestic livestock predation by wolves in Washington so far. At that time wolves were still federally endangered in Eastern Washington and Defenders of Wildlife had a program to compensate for livestock losses to wolves.

Now, the state’s compensation money comes from $30,000 in an account funded half by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and half in matching funds from Defenders of Wildlife — a circumstance that Washington Cattlemen’s Association vice president Jack Field called “a conflict of interest.”

“The folks who are funding this do not share the same goals the livestock producers have in wanting to manage and control problem wolves,” Field said. “It is (the state’s) responsibility, not some outside entity’s responsibility, to fund it.”

But not all private landowners around the state, even those in rural areas, are particularly averse to the wolves’ arrival. Typical of that response is that of Dan Studley, one of the property owners on the land Wood was hunting when he and his son encountered those several members of the Teanaway pack.

“(The wolves) came on their own. They weren’t planted,” Studley said. “I look at them like the bear and the cougar and the elk and everything else around us. They’re just wildlife. I don’t oppose them at all. If they became a problem and (state officials) had to trap some and movement, then they’ll do that.

“I just don’t see that they’re going to impact our lives that much.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect the correct year, location of and circumstances surrounding the state’s only verified livestock kill by wolves.

YAKIMA, Wash. — With waterfowl hunting ending this past Sunday, most of Washington’s main hunting seasons have come to a close and many folks will be turning their atten-tion to the up-coming fishing seasons.

Some of those, such as the early trout fishing seasons, are now only a month away and with a stellar spring salmon forecast for the Columbia, many anglers are already getting their gear ready to go.

In between now and then, there are some sportsman shows available to help with the preparation for spring outdoor pursuits.

For some of us with fishing on our minds, it’s hard to get back into the hunting mode so soon. But if you have always wanted to hunt out of state — say, with an outfitter in Montana or Wyoming or some other game-rich Western state — now is the time to start those plans.

Again, a sportsman show is a good place to begin that planning. Many guides and outfitters have booths at the shows and you can talk with them about all aspects of the hunts they offer.

While hunting with an outfitter is definitely an option, other hunters prefer to plan their out-of-state hunts on their own. A lot more preparation goes into a do-it-yourself hunt, but it can be great fun, is definitely more economical and can be very rewarding.

In my experience, hunting in other states will offer you the chance to hunt in areas with far fewer hunters than we see here in Washington, and with the opportunity to see more game than on a typical hunt here.

After hunting big game in Washington for over 20 years, getting a chance to hunt in some other states was a real eye-opener for me. It didn’t take me long to figure out there are actually some places in the West where you can go and not feel the pressure of shooting the first legal buck or bull you see.

Hunting out-of-state is not all that difficult. Yes, it is getting more and more expensive, but with a little preparation, planning and saving, you could be hunting in one of the nearby states this fall.

All the Western states offer tags for out-of-staters, but to get one you have to apply. Depending on the state, you’ll need to get your application and fees into the drawing within the next few months. Other states, such as Idaho, offer licenses and tags on a first-come, first-served basis over the counter.

Again, over the past few years, all of the states in the West have raised their license and tag fees considerably. When I first started hunting in Montana in the 1990s, a deer license and tag was only about $175. This past year the deer-only license and tag was over $560.

Most states have more applicants than they have tags. So, unless you can purchase them over the counter, it is never a sure thing. But virtually all states offer a bonus-point or a preference-point process to increase the odds of any hunter who keeps applying. None of the bonus-point systems are perfect but, frankly, they all seem to be more equitable than the system Washington uses.

Of course, it all depends on how many hunters are applying for tags each year, but most states will give you some kind of an idea how many bonus points you will need to get drawn. In most cases, such as in Montana, you should be drawn in two to three years. Last year we got drawn with one bonus point.

In other states, such as Colorado, they will basically tell you how many bonus points it takes to get drawn for certain units. Oregon gives similar information.

All the states offer maps and information about hunting on public lands, and some, such as Montana, have programs allowing hunters to access private lands as well. A little time and research will get you the information you need to figure our where to go and when to hunt.

Most of the states now have their 2012 out-of-state hunting information and applications available on line. Some have application deadlines coming up within the next month, so now is the time to start planning and preparing if you are thinking about hunting in another state.

Even though it is still months away, with a little preparation and a little luck, you could be enjoying a dream hunt in one of the nearby states this fall.

• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

District may extend spring trail closures

Officials at the Naches Ranger District, already facing an uproar over the prospect of some system trails falling to the wayside in light of the loss of trail-maintenance funding, are considering raising even that decibel level.

In hopes of minimizing resource damage to motorized trails by early-season riding on rain-saturated trails, district officials are looking into closing all motorized trails (four-wheel-drive, ATV and single-tread motorcycle) to all uses every April and May.

Although there have been annual Forest Orders that have in some heavy-rain springs similarly closed those trails until June 1, the district is proposing to go through the environmental- and social-analysis process that would make that closure rule an every-year thing.

Under the proposed action, those motorized trails would be closed not only to the wheeled-vehicle riders, but to all users.

Mailed official comments can be addressed to Michelle King, NEPA planner, at the Naches Ranger District. Emails can be sent to comments-pacificnorthwest-wenatchee-naches@fs.fed.us.

BIRD ALERT

A West Valley resident noticed the yard birds scattering and looked out to see a large prairie falcon perched in a tall cottonwood tree. The resident noted it had been several years since the last winter visit from a prairie falcon and thinks the deep snow has a lot to do with it showing up now.

Searching the neighborhoods north of Englewood on 47th Avenue, a local birder noted a birch tree (above a house with feeders) that held 30 American goldfinches, a couple of pine siskins and one preening bird high in the tree that turned out to be a common redpoll. Also seen: a merlin, two varied thrushes and four western scrub jays.

A half-day spent birding the Yakima Training Center produced a good list of hard-to-find birds in our area including greater sage grouse, gyrfalcon, Lapland longspur, snow bunting and gray-crowned rosy finch.

A Yakima Valley Audubon Society field trip from Toppenish west to Fort Simcoe tallied 42 species, including nine species of raptors (four of which were falcons). They saw bald eagle, northern harrier, Cooper’s hawk, red-tailed hawk, rough-legged hawk, American kestrel, merlin, peregrine falcon and prairie falcon.

Roosting owls were easy to see at one Parker Heights residence, where there was a barred owl in some dense junipers, a northern saw-whet owl in a row of pine trees south of the entry lane and a great horned owl high in a dense spray of incense cedars.

Call your bird sightings into the Yakima Valley Audubon phone line at 509-248-1963.

— Kerry Turley

AROUND AND ABOUT

W.K. BUTTON SHOOT: Joel Froehlich broke the day’s high score at Sunday’s fifth week of the W.K. Button Shoot with a 24×25 to take home the first button in the men’s division. The second men’s button went to Craig Lee after a lengthy seven-competitor shootoff. Bob Grey took home the senior button with a 23, while Dale Hoffman topped the super seniors and new shooter Damien Anderson took home the button in the juniors.

DNR OPEN HOUSE: The Department of Natural Resources will hold an opoen house at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Snoqualmie Middle School to discuss the future of recreation on 53,000 acres of DNR lands along the Snoqualmie corridor.

BOAT SHOW: Can’t stand the 21?2-week wait for the Central Washington Sportsmen Show at the SunDome? Check out the Seattle Boat Show at one of its two locations, at South Lake Union or CenturyLink Field, running through this Sunday.

ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadian Tuesdays will head out to a destination to-be-determined at 8 a.m. from the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot for whatever cross-country ski/snowshoe trek looks the best. Come prepared for anything and bring a lunch.

THURSDAY: Cascadian Pokies a change from the newsletter, if the weather cooperates, XC/snowshoe at North Fork of the Tieton Road, call Jim Hertel at 509-469-4458. Non-snow people, call Jeanne Crawford 509-966-8608.

SATURDAY: The Cascadians will lead a ski/snowshoe outing in the Bumping Lake area. For meeting time and place, call 509-658-2553.

If you think last week’s big winter storm put the kibosh on all outdoor activities, you are mistaken. There is a group of anglers who have patiently been sitting by just waiting for, hoping for, in fact praying for a winter event like this to hit.

Who are these winter-wanters? They are the reclusive, but very competent bunch of anglers who fish for whitefish — simply known as whitefishermen.

Now, before you get all worked up about the “men” part of the nomenclature, yes, there are a few women whitefishermen, but darned few. And those who do fish for whitefish are salt-of-the earth-anglers who could care less what you call them. As long as there is snow on the river banks and whitefish in the river, not much else matters to them.

As a whole, whitefishermen are an odd bunch. They love fishing so much they will fish in just about any weather situation, but absolutely thrive on the snowy, icy, freeze-your-finger-tips-in-an-instant type of weather we hadn’t had until a few days ago.

A winter storm like we had last week is relished by a whitefisherman like a sunny, warm spring day is to a golfer or a gardener — or, well, to any other normal angler.

Those short, dark, dreary, cold, snowy days of winter are when whitefishing is at its best. Or, at least, that is the perception. For 10 months of the year whitefish just seem to disappear from area streams, but come the nasty days of winter, they show up in droves. And when the spirit, or hunger, moves them, the whitefish will go on the bite. Then it’s Katy bar the door. When whitefish go on the bite, that may be the hottest, most fun fishing there is to experience.

A good whitefisherman will tell you fishing for the homely whitefish is not like building a piano. A few simple tools are all that are necessary for success. A whitefish fly and a maggot drifted through a hole on the Naches, Tieton or Yakima Rivers is normally all it takes. Attach a 99-cent foam float onto the line two or three feet above the fly and bingo, you’re in business.

Unlike bass anglers who need $40,000 boats that go 80 miles-an-hour, 17 different rods and four tackle boxes full of worms and lizards and crankbaits and spinnerbaits, all the tackle a whitefisherman needs to get the job done fits in the front pocket of his or her coveralls.

A single rod — of no particular type or length — with a half-working reel is a whitefisherman’s only other necessity. Some might wear a pair of hip waders, but only if they have half a dozen patches scattered about on one leg or both. Otherwise any old pair of winter boots will do just fine.

Whitefishermen will fish pretty much during any of the winter months, but they’re happiest when the weather is keeping the general population at home in front of the fireplace. While the rest of us are cursing the skies, shoveling snow, and longing for a hot July day, the whitefishermen are grabbing the bottle of maggots out of the refrigerator and pulling on the extra pair of wool socks.

So if you noticed someone smiling while watching the local weather forecast last week, it was probably a whitefisherman.

You have to be just a tiny bit different to be a true whitefisherman. Whitefishermen don’t mind fishing alone. In fact, some prefer it. They sometimes will sit on a five-gallon bucket as they fish, but most prefer standing, and will do so for hours on end. A frigid north wind that’ll blow right through any mortal angler is nothing to a whitefisherman. They are absolutely elated when they have to melt ice balls from the eyes of their fishing rods before each cast.

The funny thing about all of this is whitefish are pretty much looked down upon in the fishing world. They’re one rung up on the ugly fish ladder from a sucker. And a bonier fish you’ll never catch. Well, except maybe for a shad.

But to the discerning palate of a whitefisherman, and many others, a smoked whitefish is about as good as it gets.

Whitefish arrive out of nowhere, and disappear just as quickly. And they eat only when the spirit moves them. They might be best described as spasmodic. The same can be said for the anglers who fish for them.

This year has not been a typical whitefishing year. The snow and cold whitefishermen have awaited for weeks has finally arrived. Finally, all is right in the whitefishermen’s world.

• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

Channel clearing for White Salmon steelies

Only weeks ago many anglers were wondering whether the silt-clogged lower White Salmon River would be fishable again any time soon following last fall’s removal of the Condit Dam.

That time, apparently, is now.

Last week state fish managers reopened the lower portion of the River to fishing for hatchery steelhead, from the mouth to the county bridge below the powerhouse.

The state stocked 20,000 young winter steelhead and 24,000 summer steelhead in the river in 2010, and anglers will have a two-fish daily limit on those hatchery-origin (fin-clipped) steelies. All other species, including salmon, must be released.

Last week’s winter storm helped move a lot more silt down the channel, while another “pineapple express” winter-storm event forecast for today is expected to clear an even wider and deeper passage for upstream-found fish.

Jamboree to teach XC skiing, snowshoes

If you’ve always wanted to cross-country ski but haven’t because, well, you have two left feet and having fiberglass extensions on them sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, help is on the way. Ditto if you’ve been putting off learning to snowshoe for the same reason.

You just have to make it up to the White Pass Nordic Area between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. this Saturday.

The Yakima Nordic Ski Council, in cooperation with the White Pass ski area and with help from the Cascadians, is hosting what has become its annual ski jamboree. In addition to the free lessons from experienced volunteers, participants can also take advantage of reduced track passes and rental rates.

For more information, call Mike at 509-972-2615.

Liner takes over as Cascadians president

Sharon Liner is the Cascadians’ new president, replacing Greg Wallace, as the outdoor-activities group announced its 2012 officers in its January newsletter.

Phil Fischer and Carol Fletcher are the vice-presidents, and Fischer also serves as the conservation chairman. Other officers include Jean McKitrick, treasurer; David Wilkes, recording secretary; and Sue Gunderson, membership. Members-at-large are Marion Mann and Shara Wright.

Wallace, the outgoing president, also oversees the group’s safety/training committee.

BIRD ALERT

A short walk along the Poppoff Trail in preparation for the Yakima Valley Audubon Society Thursday bird walks that are starting this week produced a pretty good list with a Lincoln’s sparrow being the best bird of the 34 birds observed. Other highlights of the walk included: wood duck, common goldeneye, common merganser, bald eagle, Cooper’s hawk, belted kingfisher, downy woodpecker, and Bewick’s wren.

If you want to join us on one of the Thursday bird walks and learn more about our local birds please meet us at the new Greenway parking lot on the east side of the I-82 Union Gap exit Thursday, Feb. 2 at 8:30 a.m. These walks are open to the public.

The recent winter weather has changed the scene at many residential feeders and a speedy consumption of both seed and suet. Residents with bird feeders are reporting an amazing influx of white-crowned sparrows as well as golden-crowned sparrows, song sparrow, fox sparrow, dark-eyed juncos, red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, house finches, house sparrows, California quail, mourning doves, Eurasian collared-doves, pine siskins, American goldfinches, black-capped chickadees, cedar waxwings and American robins. Of course wherever there’s an influx of birds there’s also the chance you’ll be feeding a sharp-shinned hawk or two as well. A Selah resident reported that her trees were filled with thousands of calling European starling s, squabbling over dried elderberries, mountain ash berries and crab apples.

Please call bird sightings in to the Yakima Valley Audubon phone line at 509-248-1963.

— Kerry L. Turley

AROUND AND ABOUT

W.K. BUTTON SHOOT: Even falling snow couldn’t keep about 50 hardy shooters from turning out at the Pomona range to try their hand at winning a button in the Yakima Valley Sportsmen’s trap-shooting series named after the late Wayne Klingele. Rick White and Verne Bakker each fired a perfect 25×25 round to capture the men’s and senior divisions, respectively, while 11-year-old Casey Wilson topped the juniors with a 17 and Ashton Walker’s 16 took the button in the ladies. Jerry Helde broke 22 to take super senior class.

DNR OPEN HOUSE: A DNR Recreation Program open house originally scheduled for this Saturday has been postponed until Feb. 1 because of winter storm conditions. The DNR is planning for the future of recreation on 53,000 acres of DNR-managed lands along the Snoqualmie corridor, and hoping for public input from the event that will run from 7 to 9 p.m. at Snoqualmie Middle School (9200 Railroad Ave. SE, Snoqualmie).

SPORTSMEN’S SHOW: The Washington Sportsmen’s Show (www.thesportshows.com), that rather large outdoor show that annually sprawls across the Western Washington Fairgrounds in Puyallup, runs Wednesday through Sunday. If you’re over that way, you might also check out the Seattle Boat Show on the water at South Lake Union and at CenturyLink Field, running Friday through Feb. 5.

ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadian Tuesdays will lead an intermediate-to-advanced ski/snowshoe trek to a destination to be decided upon, or at least announced, this morning after the group meets at 8 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot. Bring lunch and lots of energy.

THURSDAY: The Cascadian Pokies will head out to trek the Bumping Lake trails for cross-country skiers and snowshoers. For meeting time and place, call Greg Wallace at 453-2374. If you’re looking for an alternate Pokie trip that doesn’t involve getting out into the snow, call Jeanne Crawford at 509-966-8608.

SATURDAY: The Cascadans’ David Hagen will lead an easy-to-intermediate snowshoe expedition to a destination that will depend on the latest snow and road conditions. The 13 essentials, especially extra clothes, are mandatory. For meeting time and place, call Hagen at 509-965-3697.

FEB. 8: The Cowiche Canyon Docents Lecture Series will feature local geologist David Huycke in a 7 p.m. presentation on the basalt columns that make up much of Cowiche Canyon.

MARCH 24: For trail-cleaning volunteers who like to plan ahead, here’s when the Dust Dodgers, Eastern Washington Adventures and Yakima/Kittitas Forest Watch Association will hold their annual Slab ORV area clean-up near Zillah and Buena. More on this later.

YAKIMA, Wash. — Rule-breaking anglers certainly don’t like it and even some law-abiding fishermen may not like it, but state fisheries biologists are quite pleased with the Yakama Nation’s decision to close to sport fishing the stretch of the Yakima River that borders the reservation.

For years, tribal and state fisheries and enforcement officials have been alarmed about the number of winter and early-spring anglers that, while ostensibly fishing for whitefish, have reeled in and in some cases illegally harvested steelhead.

“Our enforcement guys watched it, and in some cases if people thought they could get away with it, they would keep steelhead,” said John Easterbrooks, regional fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“You really couldn’t write a ticket when somebody caught and released a steelhead, because they could say they were fishing for whitefish and caught a steelhead. ‘We let it go, so no harm no foul,’ that kind of thing.”

But if enforcement officials weren’t around, some anglers were keeping those steelhead, which in the Mid-Columbia are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The worst violators, say state and tribal officials, typically congregated in certain deeper pools where the steelhead would hold up — like those at the confluence of the Toppenish and Satus creeks —before heading up into the tributaries to spawn.

“We were having problems with anglers there using non-whitefish-type gear and really targeting steelhead,” WDFW biologist Eric Anderson said. “It’s been a problem issue for us, but we couldn’t do anything about it because the tribe has it open.”

But the tribe, which has governance rights for the Yakima River in the so-called Boundary Reach, where it borders the reservation, was already quite aware of the problem.

“The reports (of illegal steelhead takes) have been coming in for a few years now,” said Roger Dick Jr., harvest manager for Yakama Nation Fisheries. “Even some of our field crews, when they were out doing their surveys, they were seeing some of these things and reporting it.”

So on Dec. 27 the tribe instituted a closure to all sport fishing — for any species — that would continue through the end of April. To have its own rules mirror the tribe’s, the WDFW closed the river to all fishing from the Granger bridge to the I-82 bridge at Union Gap. That closed up the only other area in the river considered a problem will illegal steelhead harvest, just below Parker Dam.

And while those actions will protect the steelhead from illegal harvest or accidental mortality, they aren’t making whitefish anglers happy.

“There’s not hundreds of them, but there’s more than a handful,” said Yakima guide/outfitter Gary Fairbanks. “I’ve probably got 20 customers that like to go fish down in that area. Then just up and close it — we buy a fishing license and then a reservation (fishing) permit and then they shut it down on us. That’s what my customers are complaining about.”

Fairbanks said, though, some anglers in the Boundary Reach were clearly targeting steelhead — even if just for catch-and-release — instead of the whitefish, which was the reason they were supposedly fishing in the first place.

“A lot of guys go down there to catch whitefish and use the legal equipment to catch steelhead,” “They’re just releasing them; they’re not doing anything wrong. They’re using a whitefish fly and a maggot, but steelhead like those.”

With the closure, of course, tribal and state enforcement officers won’t have to try to figure out whether anglers are stretching the legal or ethical limits.

“That issue has been put to bed,” Easterbrooks said. “Anyone fishing down there now is in violation of tribal rule and state rule. There’s no ifs, ands or buts.”

YAKIMA, Wash. — Birders are all about firsts — the first time they’ve seen a particular bird anywhere, or the first time in their state, or the first time that year, and so on. And considering that the Yakima Valley Audubon Society has been Christmas Bird Counts for more than a quarter-century, those firsts are getting harder to come by.

But yes, the volunteers on last month’s annual exercise in seeing what birds were out and about in the county over a single weekend — Saturday, Dec. 17, in Yakima, and Sunday, Dec. 18, in the Toppenish/Lower Valley count — did in deed rack up some firsts.

A snowy owl, spotted on the Yakima Training Center, became the first of that species to be seen in the Yakima count. So was a red-naped sapsucker espied in a tree on Naches Heights.

Kerry Turley was surveying bird species on the Yakima Training Center with another volunteer, Bill Drenguis, when he saw something white in the distant sky.

“I was just scanning the skyline and saw this owl fly across the sky,” recalled Turley, who compiles the Yakima Audubon Society’s Bird Alert feature that runs weekly in the Herald-Republic. “I was only going by flight pattern to know it was an owl, because it was a pretty good distance away and it just looked like a big white bird.”

But Drenguis and Turley were both excited about the possibility of it being a snowy owl, so they headed in the direction they’d seen the bird flying. “It was on our radar because (snowy owls) have been seen out there (on the training center) in the past when there have been irruptions of snowy owls.”

The birders’ hustle was rewarded when they saw the snowy owl — which, based on its color and size, was an adult — sitting on a rock, ignoring the harassing efforts of a northern harrier that apparently wanted the area for itself.

Three volunteers saw the red-naped sapsucker — a woodpecker distinguished by the bright red on its neck and the back of its head — in the Naches Heights area. The find was such a rarity at this time of year — these birds typically having migrated south before the end of October — that only when volunteer Kevin Lucas’ digital photos were sent to and verified by a renowned sapsucker expert in Colorado was it determined the group had added a new species to the count’s all-time list.

“That is the cool thing these days,” said Denny Granstrand, who organized the Yakima count. “So many people are carrying digital cameras and have the ability to take good photos, so you can see a bird like this and be able to know for sure what you’ve seen. In the past you wouldn’t have been able to confirm what you saw, especially in the case of a rare sighting, and in this case Kevin got good pictures so (the Colorado expert, Steven Mlodinow) was able to verify it.”

There wasn’t quite as much avian excitement on the Toppenish count, although a group of eight redheads — a species not seen on the Toppenish count since 1998 — was spotted, and other volunteers spotted a northern goshawk and a flock of 25 savannah sparrows.

Toppenish count organizer Luke Safford, though, had a little unexpected and unwelcome excitement when one of the wheels on his Chevy Suburban came off in mid-afternoon, a good seven hours into the day’s birding efforts.

“The lugnuts had gotten loose and the whole sucker came off,” said Safford, who had a couple of volunteers in the vehicle at the time. “I was going about 40 (mph) and it just came off. Luckily a guy came by, pulled over and back around. He worked at the Sunnyside Tire Factory, by chance, and he helped me put it all together. That was awesome.”

In all, the volunteers on the Yakima count chronicled 90 species and 17,477 birds, while the Toppenish totals were 81 species and 25,080 birds. Not surprisingly, the most populous bird species was European starling, with nearly 6,000 counted over the weekend.

2011 species count totals

Yakima count listed first,

Toppenish second

CW: Seen count week, not count day

Pied-billed grebe (16, 20); American bittern (0, 1); Great blue heron (40, 39); Tundra swan (0, 3); Greater white-fronted goose (2, 0); Cackling goose (10, 13); Canada goose (1,721, 722); Snow goose (CW, 1); Wood duck (148, 0); American green-winged teal (71, 155); Mallard (929, 10,078); Northern shoveler (15, 3); Northern pintail (0, 10); American widgeon (197, 14); Gadwall (23, 0); Redhead (0,8); Ring-necked duck (24, 1); Lesser scaup (14, 7); Hooded merganser (79, 3); Common merganser (84, 36); Common goldeneye (71, 0); Barrow’s goldeneye (1, 0); Bufflehead (9, 0); Duck, species undefined (80, 1); Double-breasted cormorant (2, 0); Bald eagle (10, 9); Northern harrier (20, 47); Sharp-shinned hawk (20, 8); Cooper’s hawk (10, 9); Northern goshawk (0, 1); Red-tailed hawk (108, 124); Rough-legged hawk (2, 3); Golden eagle (2, 0); American kestrel (102, 116); Merlin (6, 2); Peregrine falcon (1, 1); Prairie falcon (4, 5); Gray partridge (0, CW); Ring-necked pheasant (17, 14); California quail (700, 225); Chukar (CW, 0); Virginia rail (10, 4); American coot (41, 49); Killdeer (11, 13); Wilson’s Snipe (2, 1); Ring-billed gull (2, 0); Rock pigeon (665, 542); Eurasian collared-dove (121, 105); Mourning dove (152, 417); Barn owl (6, 1); Western screech owl (3, 3); Great horned owl (10, 5); Snowy owl (1, 0); Long-eared owl (1, 0); Northern saw-whet owl (1, 0); Anna’s hummingbird (2, 0).

Belted kingfisher (18, 14); Red-naped sapsucker (1, 0); Red-breasted sapsucker (1, 0); Brown creeper (2, 0); Downy woodpecker (104, 14); Hairy woodpecker (1, 1); Northern flicker (218, 146); Horned lark (3, 118); Black-billed magpie (366, 250); American crow (58, 19); Common raven (41, 85); Black-capped chickadee (189, 28); Red-breasted nuthatch (10, 0); Canyon wren (0, 7); Bewick’s wren (63, 25); Pacific wren (3, 3,); Marsh wren (4, 10); Rock wren (3, 0); Golden-crowned kinglet (12, 2); Ruby-crowned kinglet (71, 29); Townsend’s solitaire (1, 0); American dipper (1, 0); Varied thrush (30, 7); Hermit thrush (3, 1); American robin (316, 203); Northern shrike (3, 7); Western scrub-jay (16, 0); European starling (4,162, 1,762); Cedar waxwing (99, 86); Bohemian waxwing (2, 0); Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler (199, 138); Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) warbler (1, 14); Orange-crowned warbler (CW, 0); Spotted towhee (29, 11); Savannah sparrow (0, 25); Fox sparrow (4, 2); Song sparrow (187, 162); Lincoln’s sparrow (0, 3); White-crowned sparrow (386, 932); Golden-crowned sparrow (69, 71); House sparrow (1,391, 561); Dark-eyed (slate-colored) junco (3, 2); Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco (1,077, 551); Red-winged blackbird (201, 1,965); Brewer’s blackbird (186, 1,370); Yellow-headed blackbird (0, 2); Blackbird, species undetermined (500, 2,200); Western meadowlark (0, 31); Brown-headed cowbird (0, 13); Purple finch (4, 5); House finch (1,554, 1,213); American goldfinch (303, 174); Pine siskin (18, 0); Ringed turtle dove, exotic (0, 1).

Yakima count totals: 90 species, 17,477 birds.

Toppenish count totals: 81 species, 25,080 birds.