A Perfect Day on the Samish Flats
Story + Photography by Sara Montour Lewis
Skagit County is a perfect haven for bird lovers. The freshwaters of the Skagit and Samish rivers wind through agricultural lands and fields before finally making their way to Puget Sound, emptying into Samish Bay to the North and Skagit Bay to the South, with Padilla Bay sandwiched inbetween. This creatures a dynamic landscape for wildlife in general, but specifically for birds, as small perching birds fill the bushes and shrubs, waterfowl flood the fields and raptors line the trees.
I woke up on this particular morning at 5am and couldn’t go back to sleep. After checking the weather to see which direction looked the best I decided to head to the Samish Flats to see what I could find and lucked out with a magical, foggy morning that turned into hours of hiking with wildlife that eventually ended with a perfect sunset over Mount Baker.
There’s nothing quite like the perfect moodiness created by the low hanging fog of the Pacific Northwest, and mixed with this particular sunrise it was extra dramatic, especially as these Eagles, Hawks and Harriers would suddenly appear right in front of me, out of the fog.
As the sun got a little higher in the sky and the morning golden hour passed the light turned white again, but the fog stuck around.
The fog cleared and made way for completely blue, sunny skies. My hands warmed up enough that I was able to ditch my gloves and the birds really started swooping around, ready for breakfast.
I saw this northern harrier chase off a huge rough-legged hawk, so I figured there had to have been some kind of food involved. I got over there as quickly (but calmly) as I could and found it feasting on a mallard.
The sun was starting to go down pretty quickly (by 3 o’clock!) and I wanted to get to one more place, so I was hustling back to the car when this bald eagle caught my eye. At first I just thought that the light was reflecting off of the wings in a strange way, but I took some photos to get a closer look and suspected that it might be partially leucistic, so I decided to backtrack a little bit to see if I could get a better view.
It looks like I was right! Leucism is a genetic condition resulting in a partial loss of pigment in an animal, resulting in white, pale or patchy coloration. I’ve seen thousands of bald eagles in my life, but it was pretty fascinating to see one that looked like it had a juvenile body and a completely white adult head. I wanted to stay longer, but figured that this guy probably gets stalked enough by people, so I decided to keep going.
I left the bald eagle as the sun was setting and decided to swing by a location where short-eared owls are commonly seen at dusk, doing the most impressive acrobatics as they feed on rodents scurrying across the fields. This specific location gets pretty busy with people, so I tend not to stop very often (and I generally don’t target photographing owls in general because already get bombarded enough by photographers), but this day it was completely empty and I was able to stand back and watch them for quite a while, undisturbed.
This photograph is available as a print in our shop!
I watched the owls for a little while longer and then decided to make my way back home. On the way I had to pull over, though, because Mount Baker was putting on quite a sunset show and I couldn’t resist one more photo.
This photograph is available as a print in our shop!
