Samish Flats

On Sunday, November 11, 2018, I made a fortuitous discovery on my travels around the area I term the Skagit Flats. I discovered a small clump of trees with an understory of brush… mainly blackberry bushes. The trees had some kind of small fruits with which I wasn’t familiar, but I later determine the trees were probably Northwest crabapples. (If you have other ideas as to what this tree is please let me know!)

But the reason I was so interested in the thicket was that it was full of birds. The birds were all what I would term ordinary, but the photographic opportunities were definitely not ordinary. I’m going to list the species I saw there and then display a few photos and a story or two about my experiences.

Blackbird, Red-winged
Starling, European
Sparrow, Song
Sparrow, Golden-crowned
Sparrow, Lincoln’s
Towhee, Spotted
Goldfinch, American
Wren, Bewick’s
Hummingbird, Anna’s
Kinglet, Ruby-crowned (male)
accipiter
Harrier, Northern (male)
Hawk, Rough-legged
swans

So I spent a couple of hours on that Sunday photographing the birds in the thicket. I obtained some remarkable photographs, so I returned on Monday to see if I could repeat my success.

When I arrived at the area on Monday, November 12, I found NO birds in the thicket. I waited about five minutes and there was no movement, so I decided to try ‘pishing’. I had just begun my first phrase when I was startled by an accipiter which immediately flew from the far side of the thicket to my side, took one look at me and left the area! That explained why there were no birds in the thicket!

I realized that it would probably be awhile before there would be any chance of the birds returning, so I took an extended drive around the flats and returned maybe an hour later… and the birds were back. I began taking more photos but about ten minutes later the accipiter returned. The birds fled but this time I waited things out and the birds gradually began to return and I returned to my photography.

Something in a field caught my eye and I observed that a male Northern harrier had landed on a plant stalk. I obtained several photos but none were of good quality due to the distance involved.

Immediately after the harrier flew a Rough-legged hawk moved into the same area and briefly hovered over the field. I obtained some fairly good photos of it since the camera’s focus wasn’t handicapped by receding ground.