Olympic Birdfest

Thursday, April 10, 2025
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Location:
Dungeness River Nature Center – Rainshadow Hall

Price: $20

Presenter: Robert Steelquist

Sandhill Cranes (Antigone canadensis) represent one of the oldest surviving bird species on the planet. Their haunting calls, social behaviors and migratory pathways have astonished and inspired humans for millennia and draw thousands of birders to Midwest Flyway stopovers annually. But few people are aware that a small sub-population migrates along Washington’s coast northward to breeding areas in the remote islands of the Central British Columbia Coast and the Alexander Archipelago of Southeast Alaska. Numbering under 5,000 birds, the so-called “Canadians” represent an intermediate genetic grouping between the recognized subspecies of Lesser and Greater sandhills. Robert Steelquist has been following and photographing Sandhills of the Pacific Flyway for six years, capturing images from wintering to breeding ranges and migratory stopovers in between. In this presentation, he focuses on Sandhill Cranes that visit the Olympic Peninsula and shares their unusual life histories documented in the Lower Columbia River winter grounds, migration routes at Cape Flattery and breeding areas of Haida Gwaii and remote BC coastal islands.

Robert Steelquist is an author and wildlife photographer who has photographed  in Mexico, Canada and much of the United States. His most recent book was The Northwest Coastal Explorer (Timber Press, 2016). He serves on the boards of directors of the Dungeness River Nature Center and the Washington Native Plant Society.