Olympic Birdfest

Saturday, April 18, 2026 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Dungeness River Nature Center – Rainshadow Hall

Price: $95.00 (casual dress)

*Doors open at 5:30 PM

Enjoy a delicious buffet dinner and dessert at the Dungeness River Nature Center’s Rainshadow Hall, sponsored by Kokopelli Grill. The buffet includes salmon, a vegetarian pasta option, seasonal sides, salad, rolls with butter, and chocolate mousse, followed by an engaging keynote presentation to close out Saturday night at Olympic BirdFest.

This event always sells out so register early to save your seat. Limited to 100.

Join us for an entertaining evening with Maria Mudd Ruth and the Pigeon Guillemots—the Pacific Coast seabirds at the center of her new book, The Bird with Flaming Red Feet

The lively, charismatic guillemots are easy and fun to watch close-up from shore, though they are often overlooked by birders seeking more elusive and rarer life-list birds. Why bother learning about this common species, this “accessible alcid,” this seabird with an off-putting name that makes it sound like French pigeon?

Pigeon Guillemots have unique and fascinating stories to tell about being a seabird and about the workings of our shared environment. To hear those stories, we have to slow down and listen. For more than a decade, Maria has been studying the guillemots as a volunteer community scientist, a curious naturalist, and a writer with “attention surplus disorder.”  Through the Pigeon Guillemot, she has discovered the joys of getting to know the guillemots on one stretch of Puget Sound beach deeply across the seasons and years. Through a long-running community science program, she has contributed to scientific research and has become part of a community of hundreds of fellow “guillemoteers” devoted to this marvelous seabird across Puget Sound. Maria’s presentation is an invitation to reconnect with the natural world in new ways, to help the birds outside your door, and have fun along the way.

MARIA MUDD RUTH is the author of more than a dozen books on natural history topics for general audiences, young readers, birders and non-birders alike. Her recent books include critically acclaimed Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet and award-winning A Sideways Look at Clouds. Maria lives in Olympia, Washington, and is member of the South Sound Bird Alliance. She has been a volunteer community scientist with the Salish Sea Guillemot Network since 2013. To learn more about Maria visit mariaruthbooks.net. To learn more about the Salish Sea Guillemot Network visit http://www.pigeonguillemot.org.

Past BirdFest Banquet images at Red Cedar Room: