on the highway shoulder at the edge
of the woods. It leisurely plucked
sun-ripened fruit from prickly
vines, then slowly ambled off—
totally unconcerned with me—into
the thick understory.
To reach Little Pend Oreille
NWR, turn west toward Colville
at the village of Tiger. The small
but familiar brown national refuge
signs will guide you.
ROBERT WESELMANN
Unlike Kootenai NWR and
Creston Valley WMA, this 41,000-
acre preserve is heavily forested and
mountainous. An autoroute loop
of nearly 8 miles winds through
it. The refuge checklist has fewer
species—just over 200—but the
range of habitats provides plenty of
birding action. Stop by the visitor
center and pick up a leaflet titled
Birding Hotspots, which has a
handy map to help you navigate
among 11 sites in the refuge. While
some lie along the autoroute, others
require short hikes.
Along the forested autoroute,
you can expect to see and hear blue
and ruffed grouse, California quail,
northern pygmy-owl, northern saw-whet owl, red-naped sapsucker,
white-headed woodpecker, mountain and boreal chickadees, and
broad-winged hawks.
You’ll want to leave plenty of
time to bird a string of beaver ponds
that attract nesting warblers and flycatchers, among them least, Hammond’s, and willow flycatchers and
MacGillivray’s, Townsend’s, and
Wilson’s warblers. You can easily
spend most of a morning slowly
