Nature Watch For March -- A Monthly Guide To Our Natural Surroundings

Throughout most of this month, gray whales and several types of shorebirds, such as black brants and sandpipers, are expected to continue stopping over in Washington en route to their summer homes in Alaska and the Arctic.

Meanwhile, native birds, such as mallard ducks and great blue herons, are busily building and filling their nests with eggs. (For details on where to view some of the area's great blue heron colonies, see the story on page XX).

Here are some tips on what to watch for in April.

What to watch for: Where to look:

Barn swallows, tree swallows and Nisqually National Refuge violet-green swallows nesting; (Thurston County) Canada geese and mallard ducks nesting

Black brants (geese) Padilla Bay (Skagit County)

Barrow's goldeneye and bufflehead ducks, Nature Center at Snake Lake green-backed herons; (Tacoma)

trillium and foxglove flowers

Crabapples, magnolias, maples, Washington Park

redbuds and rhododendrons Arboretum (Seattle)

Gray whales migrating Washington's coast (good viewing points on north beaches, such as

La Push and Cape Flattery in

Clallam County)

Great blue heron nesting Mercer Slough Park (Bellevue) Black River Riparian Forest

(Renton)

Hummingbirds, skunk cabbage, trilliums Olympic National Park

(Clallam and Jefferson counties)

Migrating songbirds Skagit Flats (Skagit County)

Tulips (through Easter) Skagit Valley

Western sandpipers, and about Bowerman Basin (Grays Harbor 12 other species of shorebirds County)

Information compiled by Lisa Pemberton-Butler, The Seattle Times, from the Arboretum Foundation, Audubon Society, "Seasonal Guide to the Natural Year" by James Luther Davis, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.