The Bay and Its Birds — a stop on Chuckanut Drive.
Samish Bay and the flats below are internationally significant for birds, and if you have any interest at all it is worth a stop with binoculars.
The tideflats feed enormous numbers of shorebirds on migration — dunlin in flocks of thousands that turn in the air together and flash from dark to white as they bank. Great blue herons stand in the shallows. Bald eagles are common along this shore, and in winter they concentrate on the Skagit flats in numbers that genuinely surprise visitors.
And the Skagit Valley just south of here is one of the great wintering grounds in North America for snow geese and swans — tens of thousands of snow geese, arriving from the Arctic, sitting on the fields in white drifts and lifting all at once with a noise like surf. That is a November-to-February spectacle and it is worth planning a trip around.
Up in the forest above the road: pileated woodpeckers, varied thrush with their strange one-note call, and barred owls at dusk.
Best viewing is at a rising tide, when the birds get pushed up off the flats toward you.