hello! first post here - hope this is an appropriate place for this. I’m heading to Seattle next month and hoping to do some iNatting down there! wondering if anyone has recommendations for some nice parks or places to iNat. I’ll be staying in the Greenwood area. Would it be worth it to go over to Bainbridge for a day? Any recommendations greatly appreciated!
If you’ll have a vehicle while you’re there, cross on the Bainbridge Ferry and go to Olympic Nat’l Park! It’d be better if you were going this month, but you might still be able to catch the tail end of the coho salmon run at Sol Duc Falls depending exactly when you’ll be going. Marmots will alrady be hibernating, though, so you might skip the high elevations and stick to the coast and the rainforests.
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cool, thanks for your suggestion!
I personally like going out to Chinook Bend to go bird watching, and then swinging by Carnation Farms to grab a loaf of bread and watch the elk in the farm fields. There are lots of local options, though.
For birding in and around Seattle, Union Bay Natural Area and Juanita Bay are both great. The Issaquah Alps are surprisingly not busy places for a weekend hike, probably because they don’t offer “views”. I’ve seen bears, deer, porcupines, and bobcats on those hills, though. Now is a great time to see mushrooms, too. If you prefer the flat, Redmond Watershed Preserve, Grand Ridge, Bridle Trails, and Soaring Eagle Park are quite nice.
It’s always worth it to stop by the Olympics. Same with stopping east of the mountains! If you stop by Vantage, you might even get to see the bighorn.
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I used to live in the Puget Sound region. Bainbridge has several nature places: Grand Forest East, Grand Forest West, and Gazzam Lake Nature Reserve. Like most places in the Puget Sound region, these will be fairly typical second-growth forest. If you want to see examples of what most of the Puget Sound region is like, those are good examples. Gazzam Lake also has preserved wetlands. Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets are mainly seen in the winter half of the year, and second-growth coniferous and mixed forest is a good place to see them. They are small, active, and hard to photograph, though. Puget Sound forests have several kinds of woodpeckers, too.
Now, if you were going in the spring or summer wildflower season, the Bloedel Reserve is popular, but many of those “wildflowers” are planted, including some that only occur wild further south, beyond the glaciated area.
Let’s not forget the Puget Sound itself. November is the very beginning of the winter waterfowl season, but the Puget Sound gets all three species of Bucephala ducks overwintering, and they tend to favor bays and harbors. You will likely see seabirds right around the ferry terminals.
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Not in the Seattle area but Bellingham is a great place to iNat! The Sehome Arboretum is my favorite place to go since it’s right next to campus at WWU and Marine Heritage Park is great for birdwatching but there are many beaches, trails, and parks in Bellingham!
thanks so much!
awesome thanks for the info!
thanks!! I’ll be coming down from Vancouver so maybe I’ll check those out on the way :)
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