Skagit Birding Eco Tour

This tour runs November through March, covering the heart of Skagit Valley’s winter birding season across three distinct habitat types: farmland, coastal wetlands, and Salish Sea shoreline.

The Geese & Swans Eco Tour focuses specifically on the farmland habitat where snow geese and swans winter, in a 3-hour outing. This 6-hour tour covers that same farmland birding plus two additional habitat types: the coastal wetlands and estuaries of Skagit Bay, home to pintail ducks, wigeons, great blue herons, and dunlin, and the Salish Sea shoreline around Anacortes, where harlequin ducks, scoters, loons, buffleheads, grebes, mergansers, and cormorants are the highlights. Guests who specifically want the geese and swans spectacle and have limited time choose the shorter tour; guests who want the full range of Skagit Valley’s winter birdlife across multiple ecosystems choose this one.

Skagit Valley’s birding hotspots — the Skagit Wildlife Area, Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Samish Flats, and the Anacortes shoreline — are well documented in public sources. What a guide adds on a tour that spans three different habitat types in a single day is routing and timing: knowing which of these spread-out locations are producing the best sightings that specific week, and sequencing them efficiently rather than driving between guessed stops based on a static list. Stephanie also teaches practical skills, binocular technique, field identification by sound and behavior, and “Be Bird Wise” etiquette, throughout the day rather than leaving you to work it out from a guidebook.

Yes. The tour is rated easy, and much of the birding across all three habitats can be done from or close to the vehicle, with short, easy walks to optimal viewing areas. The tour is designed with winter comfort and accessibility in mind, making it manageable even on a cold or wet day.

The tour price includes Stephanie as your guide, transportation for the full 6-hour day, and a fuel surcharge, since Washington has some of the highest gas prices in the country. Lunch, taxes and fees, and gratuity are not included, so bring food and a beverage for the day.

The tour meets in the parking lot of Shawn O’Donnell’s Farmhouse Restaurant in Mount Vernon, chosen for being free, safe, and having clean bathrooms and good food.

Groups are capped at six guests, and the tour runs with a single guest at no additional cost. Covering three habitat types in one day means the itinerary benefits from flexibility, and a small group lets Stephanie adjust the route based on where activity is strongest that day rather than following a rigid multi-stop schedule.

The farmland portion features thousands of wintering snow geese, tundra and trumpeter swans, and bald eagles and other raptors hunting the fields. The wetlands of Skagit Bay bring pintail ducks, wigeons, great blue herons, and dunlin. Along the Salish Sea shores around Anacortes, the focus shifts to harlequin ducks, scoters, loons, buffleheads, grebes, mergansers, and cormorants feeding in the nearshore waters.

Yes. Skagit County is home to two of the largest and most important great blue heron nesting grounds in the western United States, and Stephanie can incorporate a stop to explain why this particular landscape supports such a significant heronry.

Yes. Beyond the birds, the tour offers photo opportunities against farm fields and historic barns, the snow-capped Cascade Mountains and Mount Baker, and the Salish Sea waterways with the San Juan Islands and Olympic Mountains in view.

Bring binoculars, weather-appropriate clothing including layers, gloves, a hat, and rain gear, comfortable walking shoes, and lunch, snacks, and a beverage, since food isn’t included in the tour price.