I will be birding in the Pacific Northwest from late July to mid
August, and I'm in the middle of our preparations for the trip.
I've got the birding guides for BC (Taylor 1993), Washington
(Wahl/Paulson 1991, McRae 1995) and Oregon (Evanich 1990),
but I find the wealth of information somewhat confusing, especially
as I can't really judge which sites are best at this time of the year.
And I've got to make sure I get the selection right, as my wife won't
really like to spend our entire summer holiday birding ...:)

Our itinery looks like this: First we intend to spend a few days at
Iona Island and in and around Vancouver to get us started, before
moving down towards the Olympic National Park, probably with a
break of a couple of days or so at the Puget Sound. After spending
a week or so at Olympic National Park we'll move on towards
Portland/OR.

Can anyone tell me which sites I shouldn't miss? Of course, as I've
never been to the US or Canada before everything (or *almost*
everything) will be new, but I'm very much interested in getting a
good cross-section of the birds of the NW, even though my main focus
will be on shorebirds and gulls. And are there any good sites for
whale watching at this time of the year, preferably from land? (I know
about the whale watching trips, but we'd prefer to do our whale
watching from land.)

Replies either here or by email. Thanks a lot.

Hermann Oldenburg
Claudia Kempf-Oldenburg

Hannover/Germany