Let’s Go Birding

I haven’t been able to get out and shoot very much this fall, mostly due to life and my kids’ activities. As of late, I’ve been more keenly interested in wildlife as it’s a blast to shoot and you can find wildlife literally anywhere, from my backyard to a national park. With that in mind, I had an early morning appointment up in the Skagit Valley and thought to myself “let’s go birding!” and so, I did.

I’m far from a professional birder (or wildlife photographer), but it is a lot of fun to sit and watch the birds fly, to try to figure out which species I’m seeing, and to try to predict what will happen next. I started at a spot where there’s usually a bald eagle nest a few paces from the road, in the hopes that I can take my kids up to see them later, but unfortunately, they weren’t there today. Neither were the swans, at least not in large numbers like they sometimes are. I wandered through the valley and made my way to a spot where owls are often seen, but no owls today, just a few red-tailed hawks and a couple of herons.

Not to be discouraged, I headed up to the Nooksack River to a spot where you can reliably spot eagles. I’ve been here before and there’s only been a handful of eagles and they were mostly just sitting around, but today there were around 20 or 30, and quite a few were flying and calling each other. There was a group of about a dozen quite a ways off from my spot and accessed only by private property, but I was plenty content to just watch them from where I was.