72 Microseasons of the Pacific Northwest

The Skagit and Samish Flats of northwestern Washington are among North America's premier winter raptor-watching destinations, and the peak season begins definitively in the first week of November as Arctic-breeding raptors arrive from the north. The flat, agricultural landscape — diked farmland reclaimed from tidal marsh — replicates the open tundra conditions that many of these birds need for hunting. Rough-legged hawks (Buteo lagopus) are the signature species: these large, pale-and-dark buteos arrive from Arctic Canada and Alaska in numbers, hovering motionless into the wind above fields as they hunt for voles. Their hovering behavior — rare among large hawks — makes them easy to watch and identify. Short-eared owls (Asio flammeus) hunt the same fields, flying low with floppy, buoyant wingbeats in the late afternoon, often in groups of a dozen or more birds. The combination of short-eared owls, rough-legged hawks, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and merlins all hunting the same fields on a November afternoon is unmatched anywhere in the region. The Samish Flats — reached via Chuckanut Drive south of Bellingham — and the dike roads along Fir Island in the Skagit Delta are the core viewing areas. Barn owls hunt the margins of fields after dark. Northern harriers quarter the reed margins year-round but are joined in winter by these Arctic visitors. On the BC side, the Boundary Bay area south of Vancouver mirrors this spectacle, with rough-legged hawks particularly common along the dyke trails at Boundary Bay Regional Park. Snow buntings and Lapland longspurs — small, flocking songbirds of the open tundra — often share the fields with the raptors.