Category: Birding

Low tide in Port Townsend provides a feast for crows, not quite the Game of Thrones feast for crows but don’t tell all the trapped fish in the tide pools that. For them this was just as gruesome as George R.R. Martins book. I could probably write an article about Port Townsend birding every year, it is one of our favorite places to visit and a very short trip from Edmonds. Just hop on the Edmonds-Kingston ferry and it’s about an hours drive from Kingston with a scenic crossing of the Hood Canal.

A little backed up here on new blog posts – but early summer my son and I did a short trip out to the Big Four Ice Caves on the Mountain Loop Highway. Sadly there is not much ice left out there as far as the caves go but it is a great short hike with lots of bird viewing to be had!

Nothing wrong with the cherries of course, in fact feel free to purchase some chocolate cherries here. But this was our first encounter of the Chukar in Eastern Washington, something between a pheasant and a quail the Chukar are a bit of a rare site.

It’s been too long since we’ve posted, and this will be short one but I wanted to give some attention to our friendly local Golden-crowned Kinglets. These little birds I always assume were called Golden-crowned because of their little yellow heads. But much like the Ruby-crowned Kinglet flashes it’s ruby mohawk when excited, the Golden-Crowned Kinglet flashes an orange mohawk! Maybe you already knew this but this was my first time noticing any orange color on the Golden-crowned Kinglet.

A short post here to kick off the new year. Early this fall we were quite busy and didn’t have much time for birding or travel (which of course would involve birding!). And besides enjoying our backyard bird feeder visitors, we had a couple of unexpected birding opportunities.

Well we’ve done a lot of articles, visited a lot of parks, wildlife refuges, as well as traveled out of the country to find birds and wildlife. So we felt it was time to finally list the best spots for birding in our home state of Washington. We’ve got our work cut out for us to do the same for other PNW states as well as Canada but we’ll get to it! As for this list we’ll start with our six favorite spots but may come back later to update if we feel the need to add more.

We finally took our first visit to the popular Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and were welcomed by many Rufous Hummingbirds who have migrated north for the season! Ridgefield is just north of Vancouver (Washington not BC), and is nestled next to the Columbia River where a broad wetland area exists both on the Washington and Oregon side of the river.

No I’m not talking about Snowbirders returning from Arizona, though I’m sure there are plenty of those as well. Spring has fully arrived and with Spring time weather we get bird migration! While the Puget Sound area may not be a hot bed for migration bird viewing we still get our spring and fall stop overs. With some sunny weather we headed down to the Willow Creek Fish Hatchery and the Edmonds Marsh to enjoy the day and see what birds would be out.

A trip to the Skagit Flats in winter is a must though the Skagit Valley is beautiful year round. But winter is a great time to see the Short-eared Owls, Bald Eagles, and Northern Harriers.