Yakima River Canyon Birdfest

Come bird with the Kittitas Environmental Education Network, or KEEN, for three days during the second weekend of May and discover the natural beauty of Central Washington. Kittitas County features diverse and spectacular habitats ranging from snow-capped mountains, thousands of acres of public forest, lush riparian corridors and endangered shrub-steppe open space. The Yakima River Canyon is an Audubon Important Bird Area (IBA) with some of the highest densities of passerines and birds of prey in the state, some of them obligates to the shrub-steppe habitat. Birds to see at the Yakima River Canyon Bird Fest include Sage Thrasher, Yellow-Breasted Chat, Osprey, Cooper’s Hawk, White-headed Woodpecker, Townsend’s Warbler, Peregrine Falcon, Lazuli Bunting, Canyon Wren, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Red-naped Sapsucker, Western Tanager, Yellow Warbler, Sagebrush Sparrow, Loggerhead Shrike, Mountain Bluebird, Say’s Phoebe, Bullock’s Oriole, Caspian Tern, Pygmy Nuthatch, Prairie Falcon, Golden Eagle, Sharp-Shinned Hawk, and more. For information about the events and registration for this festival, see www.ycic.org. At the bottom of the Home page, see that you can download a complete schedule with all details.