Backyard Birding:

Winter Care and Feeding

in your Garden

The first program in the series of nine Saturday mornings will discuss general bird feeding methods—including types of feeders and various foods formulated to attract specific birds.

Find out about the special needs of the Anna’s Hummingbird and other species that make the Pacific Northwest a yearlong home. Learn how to promote healthy, thriving bird populations while discouraging unwelcome mammals!

Presented by Christie Lassen, Co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited, Gardiner WA

 Drawing Swans in the Field

A Two-Day Workshop 

Welcome back Trumpeter Swans to their wintering grounds here in Sequim with this two-session class: 

Session One at the River Center will consist of a lecture on the natural history and anatomy of swans, drawing demonstrations, and participants drawing from the Center’s swan mounts.

Mon., Nov. 14, 2022

10 a.m. -2 p.m.

Session Two in the Field will consist of heading out to find the swans and drawing them with one-on-one instruction and discussion.

(Weather Dependent: We will notify participants closer to the date which day we will head into the field.)

Nov. 15 OR 16 OR 17

^{10 a.m.}

Instructors: Robert Amaral & Jenna Ziogas

To minimize our impact on the swans, the class size will be limited to 8

participants, and we will be carpooling to the fields. Pre-registration is required.

Cost: $90

Click here to register

A Note from the Gift Shop

The River Center gift shop offers hundreds of kids’ books, including Caldecott medal winners. Reading to and with children is one of life’s great pleasures. Send them a book they’ll treasure!

Take a look at the Nature Club Series by local author, Rachel Mazur, Ph.D., a fast-paced, engaging series of five books for young readers. Children can explore the outdoors with Izzy, Tai, Brooke, Zack, and Miguel. Through their adventures, they learn to help the wildlife they love while helping each other with the challenges of growing up.  

If you can't find the book you are looking for, check out the River Center’s online bookshop.

A significant portion of the cover price goes directly to River Center education. With the holidays just around the corner, books, puzzles, and workbooks can be gift-wrapped and shipped directly to the recipient! 

Leaving Leaves

Although fall marks the end of the growing season for many plant species, and wildlife starts to slow down or become dormant, it is actually the perfect time of year to start thinking about preparing our yards to be the best habitat they can be. While raking leaves might be a seasonal practice we probably all have memories of, maybe it is time we re-think this autumn tradition. 

As we learn more about soil chemistry and biology, we can see that leaving leaves on the ground might be an effective method of building up the soil, serving as a fertilizer for your yard and returning essential nutrients. So instead of sending off bags of leaves to a landfill that takes up space (yard trimmings is about 13% of all waste generation according to the EPA) and creates methane (a potent greenhouse gas), then buying fertilizer in the spring to replace those important nutrients, we can create a closed system where nothing is wasted, and harmful run-off is contained. 

Keeping this additional layer of organic material can also provide food and shelter to a variety of wildlife. Salamanders, chipmunks, frogs, shrews and many insects make the leaf layer their primary habitat. Many important pollinators such as moth and butterfly species overwinter in dead leaves. While raking up leaves you could be removing these beneficial populations and drive away bird species that come looking to feed on them in the spring. 



It is also important to keep in mind that every yard is different. If you feel your yard has too many leaves and needs some tidying up, try piling them up and adding them around the base of a tree or in a garden bed, or starting a compost pile.