BLAINE, Whatcom County — Hanging out with birders from the Pilchuck Audubon Society is like hanging out with superheroes whose special power is the ability to spot interesting birds where you and I see only the ordinary.
See that black line bobbing up and down way out in that choppy bay water there? Surely, just a couple of floating logs, right? Wrong.
By Mike McQuaide | November 30, 2006
Any day when rain isn't pouring, all manner of human motion circles the last big remnant of deep and dark native forest that once covered the hills around Seattle. Joggers and walkers and wheel spinners huff, puff, pedal or push, feel the breeze blow in off Lake Washington, watch wigeons and mergansers dabble and dive, or even eagles wing and soar.
On a clear day, Mount Rainier visually leaps from the horizon in the southeast.
By Greg Johnston | November 24, 2005
MONTE CRISTO -- Into a chaos of glacier-carved stone we climbed, along a trail of roots, rocks and mud that could barely be called one, on a birding trip that at times seemed more a wild goose chase.
That's not to say it wasn't pure backcountry bliss.
Gothic Basin, high above the historic abandoned mining town of Monte Cristo in eastern Snohomish County, is an intriguingly stark crown of rock buttresses and ridges cradling crystal tarns and a lake, accented by patches of heather and huckleberry, the latter now burnished scarlet by the days of fall.
By Greg Johnston | October 7, 2004
Habitat: 111-acre Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife site with dike separating mud flats from agricultural fields; deciduous trees and shrubs on remnant delta by tide gate.
Birding season: Winter.
February 13, 2003
Bird-watchers drive all over the country to pursue their passion, heading up to the Skagit to see eagles and raptors, ferrying to Whidbey to watch ducks and grebes or journeying to the forested foothills to find woodpeckers and songbirds.
Stop and look around Seattle proper, however, and you might be surprised. Within five minutes of the Space Needle -- as an eagle glides -- a dedicated birder might see 100 species in a day.
By Greg Johnston | November 21, 2002
