MY PARADISE

 

                                   Photo by Marty Lehr, March 30, 2023

This is part of the Paradise I live in.  Recently I was with friends on the mainland going through the Skagit Valley.  It was a sudden burst of warm spring (to last only 3 days). It is one of the most fertile valleys in the country. The farmlands and wetlands, estuaries and marine waters, prairies and forests of the Skagit Valley provide the wintertime habitat needs for hundreds of bird species, including trumpeter swans, snow geese, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and countless others.

This valley is the winter home of over 100,000 Snow geese and the Skagit Flats has been identified as an Important Bird Area by the National Audubon Society and in 2012 it was designated as Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) site.

The Snow geese arrive from Wrangel Island in the Arctic in massive, undulating Vs. in the autumn. You can hear them coming as clouds of them descend on the fields.  The masses look like snow on the green fields. The experience to be in the middle of this phenomenon  is a wonder to behold,  one which I never tire of seeing, even after many years.