News - Willapa Hills Audubon Society

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Children’s Discovery Museum: Discovering a Wonderful World

Details: Category: News

The Children’s Discovery Museum in Longview is currently closed due to COVID-19, but it is maintaining a presence in the community by offering daily links to websites of interest to kids on its Facebook page.

These include short presentations, many of them videos, on birds, plants, animals, chemistry, astronomy, and other science as well as stories, songs, experiments and activities, and travel destinations. For every link that is posted there are many more sites of interest on similar topics. We are putting a link on our WHAS website to these offerings and encourage you to explore further.

Happy surfing!

Winter Raptor Survey Slide Presentation

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Check out this slide presentation by Jeff Fleischer of East Cascades Audubon, coordinator of the Winter Raptor Survey Project. Several members of Willapa Hills help with survey routes in Cathlamet and Puget Island, Grays River, Naselle and Rainier, OR.

The presentation is packed with information and is a great way to continue birding education during the long winter and while Covid19 keeps us isolated.

A quarter-million swifts roosted in Rainier!

Details: Category: News

Hats off to Carolyn Norred and her crew of volunteers! They documented 270,052 Vaux’s Swift “roostings" at Riverside Community Church in Rainier during the southbound migration. The only roost site to beat Rainier was the McNear Brickyard in San Rafael, CA.

Details are below in Larry Schwitters's summary of the count.

Hummingbirds in Slow Motion

Details: Category: News

Have you ever wondered about Hummingbirds?

Here is a video with over 20 amazing facts, it includes slow motion footage of the bird hover and fly backwards in hd. It would make a great short clip for school nature projects.

Vaux's Swifts in Rainier Oregon

Details: Category: News

Vaux's Swifts are starting to roost in the Riverside Community Church chimney in Rainier. We already had a few readings getting up to 20,000.

Folks wishing to check out this phenomenon for themselves will have the best chance from half an hour before sunset until half an hour after sunset. The southward migration of the swifts from all over the Northwest starts in September, affording us more opportunities to view thousands of them entering the chimney. You can watch them from the lower parking lot accessible from W C St next to Fox Creek.

Larry Schwitters of Vaux’s Happening recently sent out the rankings for the top 14 roost sites on the flyway for the northbound migration. Rainier's Riverside Community Church ranked second or third in all three categories! Southbound migration usually has far larger numbers -- check it out and say hi to Carolyn and Art.

Fall 2020 Whistler is online

Details: Category: Whistler

The Fall 2020 Whistler is available now.

Watch the Video of our Program: Exploring the Waters Of The Pacific Northwest

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In case you missed our latest program: Exploring the Waters of the Pacific Northwest - A Solo Kayaker's Journey by Kyleen Austin you can now watch it anytime:

It is the story with photographs of Austin's epic journey kayaking from Alaska to Washington during Summer, 2019.

Summer 2020 Whistler is online

Details: Category: Whistler

The Summer 2020 Whistler is available now.

Kids' Activity Pages

Details: Category: News

By Larry Brandt

We know how bored and upset kids can get at times when their activities are restricted. Perhaps we have an answer for parents and grandparents caring for grade school kids during the covid-19 pandemic. We have seven pages of things for kids to do at home. Of course, they are conservation, outdoor and environment related. Hopefully, they will provide your youngsters with hours of entertainment.

All pages were developed by Suzy Whittey, a long-time member of Willapa Hills Audubon. Each comes as a .pdf file that you can open (and download) by clicking the image. Then just print them and you are set.

Bird Color Page