Snohomish County recreation
'A neat little ecosystem'

By Diane Brooks
Times Snohomish County bureau

	HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES A male red-winged blackbird picks at a cattail at Edmonds Marsh. Hundreds of bird species have been spotted in the area.
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EDMONDS — Railroad tracks and dry-docked yachts lie to the west, ferry traffic to the east, an industrial park to the north and a mammoth condominium construction project to the south.

Tucked in the middle is a 23-acre marshy oasis offering some of the best bird-watching in Snohomish County.

"It's kind of a neat little ecosystem," said local resident Bruce Kroon, who last week led an early-morning Cub Scout trip to Edmonds Marsh.

The third-graders, who had the day off from school, were working on their bear badges, which require a trip to a zoo or wildlife refuge.

"We spotted a lot of animals," said Conor O'Neill, 9.

He and the other four boys mentally checked them off: an owl in a tree, a spider on a walkway, finches flying overhead and great blue herons, ducks and a frog in the marsh.

"I want to come back at night and see an owl flying or a coyote," Conor added.

Coyotes do sometimes visit the marsh, according to interpretive signs at four viewpoints along the marsh's northern end, where paved walkways and a short boardwalk run along a 2,000-foot stretch of wetlands.

"It's really an amazing place," said Arvilla Ohlde, Edmonds' parks director.

Many maps still identify the park as Union Oil Marsh, a testament to its former ownership. The company, now Unocal, operated at nearby Point Edwards for nearly 70 years, pumping refined-oil products from the waterfront into hillside storage tanks. Now the tanks are gone, and the hillside is being prepped for 295 condos.

	Susie Schaefer of Edmonds watches birds at Edmonds Marsh, a refuge formerly owned by an oil company. The city acquired the property in 1981.

The marsh once covered 40 acres, but it shrank through development of a railroad, nearby roads and the adjacent Harbor Square industrial park. Union Oil deeded the marsh to Edmonds in 1981.

From an environmental point of view, the land's most auspicious moment came in 1988, when the city reopened a long-closed tide gate near Marina Beach.

Development of the Edmonds Marina in 1962 had cut off saltwater flows, transforming the marsh into a freshwater wetland fed by Deer Creek. With the tide gate again open, the marsh now offers a blend of saltwater and freshwater habitats, attracting a colorful variety of songbirds and shorebirds.

Bird-watchers have documented 225 species at various times of the year. Year-round residents include herons, belted kingfishers, gulls, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, chickadees and sparrows.

Red-winged blackbirds are especially numerous now, plucking fluff from cattails for their spring nests and drowning out the calls of other birds with their distinctive rolling trills.

Other varieties — black-chinned sparrows, common yellowthroat warblers and western sandpipers among them — are making their way north, migrating to Canada and Alaska.

The site's popularity among birders is evident on Audubon Washington's "Great Washington State Birding Trail," a poster-size map to 68 prime birding spots around the state.

The "trail" begins at Edmonds Marsh, heads along Highway 2 into Eastern Washington, loops north into the Winthrop area and then back west along Highway 20. It swings as far north as Blaine, Whatcom County, before dropping back south to end at Kayak Point Regional Park, just north of the Tulalip Reservation.

"You can come any time of day or night and find something," explained Susie Schaefer, a board member of Pilchuck Audubon.

On a recent rainy morning, she was somewhat disappointed to spot only a dozen species, including a Canada goose, song sparrows, robins, house finches, bushtits, a group of great blue herons, and several types of ducks and gulls.

The park is difficult to find, with no signs off nearby roads to alert passing motorists to its presence. It's hidden behind Harbor Square, accessed off Dayton Street just east of the railroad crossing.

But it's a treasure for those in the know.

"It's a peaceful place to take a walk," said local resident Lorna Hudgens, 81, who took a boardwalk stroll in the rain late one recent afternoon.

"It's a beautiful thing — a nice place to get in touch with the quiet world of nature."

Diane Brooks: 425-745-7802 or dbrooks@seattletimes.com

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