Birding Blog Posts I Started to Make (and Some I Finished)

28 Mar, 2026

Holy shit I haven't posted about all the birding I've been doing. Since I last wrote, I have been birding on the following occasions:
- 3/18 at Theler Wetlands
- 3/20 at Gig Harbor
- 3/22 at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge
- 3/26 at Sauvie Island, OR
So in this post will be posting photos from all of these, but probably not every photo like I've been doing, because otherwise the post would be like three times the length of my already way too long posts that I'm pretty sure no one is reading all of. Here we gooooo!

On 3/22 I think I might have seen four Sandhill Cranes flying over Gig Harbor because I saw really big birds (like really big) that looked like herons but too big, but I didn't have my camera or binoculars out because I was just packing up from birding when they flew over. I refuse to count encounters like this toward my official "I saw this bird" list because there are too many times I've done some "wishful identifying" where I think I've seen an Osprey when really it was a juvenile bald eagle, or where I think I've seen an American Tree Sparrow where really it's a House Sparrow. (You can probably get it from context, but the time and place I'm at
Birding is perfectly designed to give you FOMO. You can't be everywhere at once, and you can't be looking all the time. You have to live your life, you have to choose one place to bird over another. Getting plugged into people talking about birds online is cool but also you will encounter a lot of people posting birds you won't see, both locally and far away, maybe even posting bird you didn't see at the place you were birding during the same time you were there.
I found myself in Portland day before yesterday and went birding on Sauvie Island because ebird said there have been Sandhill Cranes there. The house I was staying at had some birds in their yard we don't get as often here in Washington, so as usually I took some really bad photos that I had to try to fix with my nascent photo editing skills:
^{Lesser Goldfinch}

^{Band-Tailed Pigeon}

^{California Scrub Jay}

^{This is just a crow. We have crows too, but Portland has more of them. Portland has more crows than any city I've ever been in. The city of Portland primarily belongs to crows, the way New York or Chicago belong to Rock Pigeons, or Seattle belongs to Seagulls.}

Once I was at Sauvie Island, I immediately saw these two bald eagles and their huge-ass nest. I bet I could fit in a Bald Eagle nest.

^{These photos are so bad, I'm sorry.}

Then I heard some sounds that sounded like a bizarre turkey and turned around. Across the road, in a flooded field, were hundreds of Sandhill Cranes. An uncountable number. These photos cannot give a full impression. I couldn't fit all of them in one photo, even from very far away.

^{Sandhill Cranes are huge. To give you an idea, Sandhill Cranes stand between 3.5ft and 5ft tall. Emus are between 5 and 6 and a half feet tall. Sandhill Cranes can fly though. They can really fly and their wings are 6 to 7 feet wide, around the same as a bald eagle, though they often fly in huge flocks.}

The Sandhill Cranes were really the main spectacle here, but I did see some other birds!

^{Northern Flickers, my loves}

^{A flock of gorgeous American White Pelicans, flying in a V over my head! This was another life bird for me.}

^{What I am pretty sure are Tree Swallows, but I guess could be another kind?}

^{Whatever this bird is. I do not know. Merlin's photo ID tool said it's a Vaux's Swift and I just don't believe that. It's not really Swift season yet. It could maybe be an owl of some kind, but I am not experienced at IDing owls from other birds quite yet. It was high enough up that I can't even tell really what size it is, as I had nothing to compare it to. Let me know if you know what this bird is. I posted it on r/whatsthisbird so I'll let you know if I get an answer. Update: it's a fucking starling lol}

I also saw my first Sharp-Shinned Hawk!

And a volcano: ^{A bald eagle and its nest photobombed my Mount Saint Helens pic.}

I went birding at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge in Washington to try to see Tree Swallows for the first time. [This was a week ago, before I saw them at Sauvie Island.]
^{Requisite Bald Eagle photos}

^{Get a room already, Song Sparrows!}

^{First time I've been able to get a photo (a bad one) of a Western Meadowlark}

^{River Otter doing what he otter be doing}

^{Yellow-rumped dipshit (jk i love you yellow-rumped warbler)}

^{My favorite Starling photo}

^{Requisite Great Blue Heron photos}

^{Very coot}

^{Greater Yellowlegs. Pretty great!}

So for most of this birding trip, I saw lots of swallows that I couldn't identify and they all were constantly flying, doing these extremely fast loops, going way high in the air, spinning around, doing little tricks, and they all looked like this:

Then, finally I saw one land and got a photo and a clear ID. These were Tree Swallows (or at least this one was):

Then I reached the area where there are two barns next to each other, and holy fuck, these barns were COVERED in tree swallows. Landing flying zipping around. I was able to get some unbelievable (for me) photos of them:

In addition to getting my lifer Tree Swallows, I also got my lifer Rufous Hummingbirds. And some excellent photos:

^{How are they so small and perfect??}

^{The feet!!! The tiny feet!!!}

^{Idk why but they look like they're from a stop-motion animated film?}

And last but not least, there was this Cackling Goose right on the gravel path. Remember how I said you can tell the difference between a Canada Goose and a Cackling Goose because the Cackling Goose is cuter. To demonstrate, I'll pull in a photo of a Canada Goose from my last trip to Nisqually (also right along the path):

^{I was a little afraid of him}

Now here's the Cackling Goose:

^{A perfect boy who wouldn't hurt a minnow.}

I also went to Gig Harbor and saw Cormorants and an Orca :D
^{They could be in a new wave band.}

^{Wild Willy}