Red-winged Blackbird

Here is a female Red-winged Blackbird at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge on 18 December 2019. Not black and lacking red shoulders, female Red-winged Blackbirds are often misidentified by beginning birders. The full name of the refuge, clearly one of our favorite birding destinations, is actually the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. The 12.6 square-km refuge includes a protected estuary, salt and freshwater marshes, mudflats, grasslands, and woodlands. My understanding of the refuge’s history is derived from various sources. Here is a very concise summary:

White settlers first settled the area in 1845. At that time, timber was exported to San Francisco. In 1854 the local Nisqually Tribe signed a treaty, granting the tribe fishing, hunting and gathering rights, and apparently some land rights, which are still held by the tribe. During the late 1800s, the Nisqually River esturary was diked and drained for agriculture. In 1904, Alson Brown purchased 2350 acres of the esturary and built a four-mile dike and drained the area to raise crops and livestock. In 1932, two large barns were built, which still stand today. The refuge used them as an environmental education center, but they were severely damaged by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. Subsequent owners put the land up for sale in the early 1970s. The Nisqually Tribe lacked funds to purchase the land. Proposals for creating a deepwater port or a regional garbage dump were on the table. Local environmentalists were able to persuade the Federal Government to create the wildlife refuge in 1974. Much of the mudflats now enjoyed by wildlife were created about ten years ago with the destruction of the old dike.

In 2015, President Barack Obama signed an act designating the wildlife refuge in honor of a flamboyant Nisqually tribal leader and treaty rights activist, Billy Frank, Jr., who died in 2014. The act also established the Medicine Creek Treaty National Memorial within the refuge to commemorate the original Nisqually Treaty.