Bird Tracks & Sign Walking
Field Course

Bird Tracks & Sign Field Course

Febuary 6th & 7th 8:30 - 3:30

(two separate classes but you can take both our days are never the same)

Track & Sign of Birds - One-Day Field Course - We will explore bird tracks & sign in the legendary Skagit valley, a mecca for wintering and migrating birds on the Washington coast. We’ll move across the landscape while interpreting a wide variety of bird tracks & sign, including footprints, kill sites (feathers and bones), feeding sign, pellets, scats, and more. We’ll help you round out your skills of both birding and tracking by giving you insights into often overlooked behaviors of birds, and the signs they leave behind.

This day-long course explores the heart of a holistic tracking skillset that aims to understand how all animals interact in a landscape and affect the ecology of a place.  You will grow your bird tracking knowledge, and we’ll show you new ways to observe and interpret the subtle signs of our avian neighbors. These courses are intimate with a small group of 8-10 participants each day.

Temperate Rainforest Ecosystem/Skagit Valley Wetlands

The Skagit Valley’s inland biome is mostly dominated by bigleaf maple and Douglas fir, but we’ll be spending much of our time in the grassy wetlands of the coastal plain where the Skagit River spills into the Puget Sound.  Expect mudflats of freshwater, sandy and rocky shorelines, scattered ponds, and pockets of willow and cottonwood. Some of our time might lead us into the conifer forests, especially if the wind picks up.  It’s the perfect habitat to see snow geese, bald eagles, short-eared owls, and a multitude of shore birds and songbirds.  This estuary habitat, where one of the west’s largest rivers meets the Salish Sea, is truly remarkable both for its beauty and its diversity and abundance of wildlife.

Your Instructor Mark Thompson is a lifelong hunter, birder, and student of ecology of western landscapes, from the desert southwest to the Rockies and Cascades. He began tracking animals over 20 years ago, and over the last seven years has devoted himself fully to this ancient science. Understanding how wild animals interact with each other and with their landscape is what drives him, and he’s found no better practice for this than tracking them in the wild places they call home. He holds a Specialist certificate in Track & Sign and has a Level 3 Trailing certificate. 

Your lead co-instructor is lead naturalist and birder Kevin O’Malley.  Founder of South Sound Nature School, Kevin has been leading & teaching beginners, intermediate & expert birders wanting to go deeper and further their knowledge about habitats and behaviors of birds, particularly birds of the Eastern Cascades by identification, behavior and unique Shrub-Steppe & Eastern Ponderosa Pine Forest habitats. Kevin is particularly skilled in noticing bird tracks, nests, pellets & feeding signs these clues are important part of finding your favorite bird track or sign. Kevin holds a Level 3 Track & Sign and a Level 3 Trailing certificate. More importantly Kevin has spent extensive time in the field with Casey McFarland and Marcus Reynerson, mentoring directly under some of the most skilled trackers on the planet. He is a Kamana 4 certificate holder, an Immersion Graduate and has a degree in Cultural Anthropology.Through this experience, you will grow a skillset in exploring the vast world of wildlife tracking. While we will certainly cover some of key fundamental themes, every tracking experience is unique, and we will go where the tracks take us. Topics that will likely be explored:

Through this experience, you will grow a skillset in exploring the vast world of wildlife tracking. While we will certainly cover some of key fundamental themes, every tracking experience is unique, and we will go where the tracks take us. Topics that will likely be explored:

• Basic bird foot physiology and morphology
• The Natural History of Landscapes
• Clear print identification/Different types of Bird Tracks
• Concepts in behavior and bird sign interpretation
• How birds & other wildlife interact with landscapes
• How to age tracks and sign on the landscape

Whether an experienced or beginning tracker, participants will leave this workshop looking at the ground (and up in the trees) in a completely different way and with new tools and “search images” to continue to develop themselves as naturalists and ecologists.

Cancellation: Full Refunds minus $50 processing fee given before 30 days of program after that I will honor a credit If I can fill your spot!

Please note these are small classes so a late cancel might mean you forfeit your payment but most importantly with a late cancel someone loses an opportunity to take the the field class.