Skagit Valley barn near Big Ditch

It was time for our annual trip up to the Skagit Valley for a little bit of birding. This year I used the Snow Goose Festival website for some ideas on where to go along with a read through the local posts on Tweeters newsgroups. The best place seemed to be Boe or Thomle Road just south of Stanwood.

Our birding friend meet us with us at our house. We decided to start near Stanwood and then head north. Our first stop was Boe Road. We saw a large beautiful flock of snow geese but they were a bit away. Next we headed to Big Ditch. Surprisingly – no one was in the parking lot. We headed first towards the end of the stream but saw nothing and then headed back along the ditch where we saw a couple of raptors in the tree. We were surprised that there was little activity. We met a couple of groups and one said that they had seen some snowy owls back at Thomle. Hmmm..

I was hungry we we continued north. We stopped at Haydon reserve. The eagles that we normally see were not nesting there this year. There weren’t any geese near the road either. We saw lots of trumpeter swans in the fields. We headed on up to Anacortes for lunch at the Brown Lantern.

After lunch, we discussed where to go. We decided to make one more stop south of Stanwood along Thomle Road. G is so good at spotting and he saw the snowy owls along the dike. They were too far to get a picture with my camera but we were able to see them well in the bird scope.

Overall a nice birding day.

Big Ditch Slough

Marshes at Big Ditch

Marshes at Big Ditch

Raptors in tree at Big Ditch Slough

Skagit farmland from Hayton Bird Reserve

Trumpter Swans on Fir Island