Birding highlights of 2024

George Walter

Photo by Jill Severn

As the seasons change each year, birds go through their usual migration-breeding, migration-wintering cycle.

You might think bird-watchers would get bored with the repetition. But nothing could be further from the truth. Every year ends with a list of peak experiences or, for Liam Hutcheson, best photographs.

The best for me was a year ago when a friend and I journeyed up to Skagit Flats. The best part was encountering a huge flock of 10,000 snow geese and watching them all rise into the air at once. What a cacophony!

Other winter highlights were few in 2024, but the spring migration of shorebirds didn’t disappoint. Late April and early May shorebird migration peaks, and Grays Harbor is one of the best locations for this on the West Coast to see them.

It’s so good the human crowds can be overwhelming. We tried a site on the south side of the harbor called Bottle Beach and were surprised by just how close the birds came in at high tide.

Side by side - Barred Owl on left & Northern Spotted Owl on right.

Photo by Liam Hutcheson

Another memorable story of 2024 was the determination by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that it would adopt a program of culling (removal by killing) barred owls that threaten the breeding success of endangered spotted owls.

Liam’s January column was an impressive account that laid out the debate very well and received a record number of comments.

We followed up with another column in September and a link to a detailed discussion designed to defuse, or at least tone down, the heat being generated by the USFWS program.

Scrub Jay - close up.

Photo by Liam Hutcheson

As many readers will know, three bird species — Anna’s hummingbird, Eurasian collared dove and scrub jay — were almost unknown in Thurston County 15 years ago. Now they are quite common, suggesting that bird species ranges are not fixed on the pages of a bird book.

Birds themselves have something to say about the matter. This year offered further evidence that additional species are expanding into Thurston County.

Lesser Goldfinch

Photo by Liam Hutcheson

In most bird books, the distribution of lesser goldfinch shows that its range barely reaches Washington state, but that seems to be changing rapidly.

Now birders find them semi-regularly in Thurston County, although they can be difficult to identify. This is one place where the Merlin website might be useful, since they are mostly seen flying away while issuing a distinctive vocalization.

Two other species are also recently seen in our county, and worth keeping an eye for. The first is the red-shouldered hawk. This hawk looks vaguely like a small red-tailed hawk.

In addition to its red shoulder patch, the adults of this species have reddish underparts and lack the central white area of most red-tails. They also have black and white tail bands.

Black Phoebe

Photo by Liam Hutcheson

The second species being found more and more often, even in the winter, is the Black Phoebe. It is a flycatcher-type bird, darting out from a perch to catch prey. It is easily identified by its black overall color contrasting with its white belly.

If you look at bird range maps, you will find the red-shouldered hawk’s and black phoebe’s regular ranges do not include Washington state. I’ll bet that the next edition of these maps will.

Finally, any summary of 2024 would be remiss by not mentioning bird flu. This virus widely infects birds, especially waterfowl, and in 2024 has been infesting mammals, especially cows held in close quarters in milking herds, and also some humans that work in these milking facilities. Very recently, I wrote in Thurston’s Birds about the relatively high-risk bird flu poses to cats.

I have been tracking articles about the spread of bird flu and the news is not encouraging, although every article stresses statements from various human health agencies that the risk to humans remains low. The disease transmission seems to be going only from cow to human and not human to human, and that’s good.

But there are three things that disturb me. First, none of the articles I found in my search mentioned anything about cats unless I included cats in the search request. Cats are common in American households, and I think any bird flu article should take an opportunity to alert cat owners to the risks.

Second, tracking bird flu involves two different sorts of agencies, at both state and federal levels, agriculture departments and health departments. These agencies take different approaches to their investigation (voluntary vs. quasi-mandatory), and thus in many states there is no active testing program for agricultural livestock or products. It seems that wide segments of our population have lingering resentments about COVID-19 and feel that, if we just ignore or deny the problem, it will go away.

These are serious matters. The more dairy workers become infected, the greater the possibility of the virus mutating to increase its ability to spread from human to human.

Finally, I think we should all understand that much of our milk supply comes from super-large dairy herds and that a majority of the employees that work these herds, including virtually all those workers being infected with bird flu, are immigrants. Whether these workers are legal or not, the proposed deportation effort could pose a risk of spreading bird flu far beyond the limits of dairy operations.

I hope that, as writers a year from now summarize their work from 2025, we will read about how the risks of bird flu have diminished and that all those 2024 alarmists were wrong, dead wrong.

George Walter is environmental program manager at the Nisqually Indian Tribe’s natural resources department; he also has a 45+ year interest in bird watching. He may be reached at george@theJOLTnews.com

Photos for this column are provided by Liam Hutcheson, a 17-year-old Olympia area birder and avid photographer.