SEQUIM — Above our heads, out in the waves and down by the river, songs and splashes are converging: This is the weekend of the Olympic Peninsula Birding Festival, three full days of outings and discovery of the Sequim area’s diverse avian life.
This annual fundraiser for the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society draws people from across the region and nation, said Bob Boekelheide, director of the Dungeness River Audubon Center that morphs into “Bird Central” this Friday.
“This year we have them coming from Illinois, Michigan, Utah, California,” he said, adding that Sequim and environs are especially alluring at this time of year.
The BirdFest comes in early April because, Boekelheide said, that’s when the spring migration intersects with the lingering winter populations.
So those who embark on one or more of the festival’s 22 guided field trips can learn about the area’s numerous winged residents — some 150 species — while exploring places through fresh eyes.
“We go beyond the juncos and robins,” Boekelheide said, “to the warblers and shorebirds,” plus eagles, owls, hawks and herons.
He also introduces locals to “birds that have been hanging around your backyard, but you don’t know them,” at least not by their species names.
Totem tour
The festival starts Friday with sightings of mythical thunderbirds and ravens — as in those depicted on the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s totem poles.
Master carver Dale Faulstich, along with tribal interpreters, will guide the two-hour Totem Tour through and around the Jamestown tribal center on Sequim Bay. The morning outing, including lunch, costs $30.
More outings
Friday afternoon has field trips to the Three Crabs-Dungeness Bay waterfront, to the Sequim Bay-John Wayne Marina area and to Dungeness Spit, for $20 each.
Saturday and Sunday bring more outings, including two voyages around Protection Island and tours of the Northwest Raptor Center just outside Sequim.
One can go out to the water with binoculars and a bird book any time, of course.
But this weekend, “you have guides to help you to know what you’re looking at. They’re Audubon members who’ve been birding here for years,” said Audrey Gift, orchestrator of the BirdFest and president of the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society.
Other activities this weekend: an exploration of the north Peninsula’s bays and coasts from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday for $75 per person, and a traditional salmon feast Saturday night at the Jamestown tribal center.
Featured speaker John Marzluff, a professor in the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington, will give a talk after dinner titled “In the Company of Crows and Ravens.”
To make reservations for the Saturday banquet, for which tickets are $30 per person, phone the River Center at 360-681-4076 by noon Friday.
Some BirdFest events are already at capacity, such as Saturday’s tour of the Elwha River dams, the “owl prowl” Saturday night and the Sunday tour of Arnold Schouten’s endangered waterfowl sanctuary near Port Angeles.
But many other outings still have space. Those include the Protection Island cruises on Sunday, the Dungeness-area field trips and the “Dawn Chorus” walks along the Dungeness River on Saturday and Sunday morning with Boekelheide, a virtuoso when it comes to imitating bird calls.
And for those hungry for a farther-flung trip, Boekelheide will serve as the naturalist and guide on a cruise to the San Juan Islands, Sunday through Tuesday.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsula dailynews.com.
