Refuge Etiquette and Viewing Etiquette

2026 Essential information about the FESTIVAL. The 28th annual festival will be held March 20-22, 2026, in Othello, WA. REGISTRATION Q & A. Registration is OPEN and ONLINE only. The link for this is available on the website and Facebook. We use EVENTBRITE. Small group registration: One person can register for the entire group and purchase multiple tickets. All tickets will be under the registrant's name, so your group should check in together. Boat tours use open-air boats, e

Although Othello is well-known for the spring Sandhill Crane Festival, birders also regularly travel to our area during the fall migration season. Our area is part of the Pacific Flyway, an “interstate” for avian migration. Thirty-two different types of mammals and over 200 species of birds have been observed at the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. At the height of spring and fall migration, biologists estimate the refuge is home to up to 100,000 birds. The diversity of wil

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SPECIES SPECIFICS Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) are large, long-legged and long-necked birds of the order Gruiformes, and family Gruidae. There are 15 species of cranes in the world, but only two are found in North America—the Sandhill crane and the whooping crane. The whooping crane is essentially all white and is slightly larger than the Sandhill crane. There are six subspecies of Sandhill cranes—greater, lesser, Florida, Cuban, Mississippi and Canadian. However, there