Field Notes
Urban Birding
The best birding inside the city — parks, shorelines, and what's reachable before work.
San Francisco, CA
Birding San Francisco Bay: Don Edwards, the Salt Ponds, and the Shoreline
San Francisco Bay lost roughly ninety percent of its tidal marsh and then built one of the first urban national wildlife refuges in the country on what was left. The birding is exceptional, the sites are free, and the salt ponds are in the middle of the largest tidal wetland restoration on the west coast.
Seattle, WA
Birding Seattle: A Bluff, a Landfill, and a Naval Air Station
Seattle's best birding sites are a 534-acre bluff park, a capped municipal landfill owned by a university, and a decommissioned naval air station. All three are free, all three are on transit, and between them they cover most of what the Puget Sound lowlands hold.
Portland, OR
Birding Portland: The Island Where Half the Units Close in October
Portland has a 5,200-acre forest inside the city, one of the largest protected wetlands in any American city, and an agricultural island twenty minutes north where several of the best units close on October 1 and do not reopen until spring. Knowing which is which is the whole trick.
Nashville, TN
Birding Nashville: The Park Where You Cannot Jog, and Why
Radnor Lake was Tennessee's first State Natural Area and it bans pets, jogging and bicycles on almost the entire trail system. That rule is the reason it is the best birding within the city limits, and it tells you something useful about what a natural area designation actually does.
Anchorage, AK
Birding Anchorage: 1,550 Feet of Boardwalk and a Bird That Flies to Antarctica
Potter Marsh sits between a highway and the Chugach Mountains, holds at least 130 species, and may be the most accessible wildlife viewing in Alaska. Anchorage is an excellent birding city, with a short and intense season and a set of hazards no other American city has.