President’s Report - October 2026

Bill Derry, president of the Pilchuck Audubon Society, speaks to the Edmonds City Council about National Lights Out Sept. 22, 2026. Derry joined Marjie Fields from the Sierra Club in encouraging people to reduce unnecessary nighttime lighting during peak bird migration periods. Photo courtesy of My Edmonds News/September 23, 2026.

By Bill Derry

On Tuesday, September 22nd, the Mayor of Edmonds read a proclamation regarding Lights Out at the City Council meeting. I was allowed to make a few comments. Many thanks to all of you that contacted the Mayor to support this. Before the meeting the Mayor told me that about 120 people contacted him to support the Lights Out proclamation.

Next up we hope to work with Bothell, Snohomish, Mountlake Terrace, and Everett to adopt a Lights Out proclamation. Then, we will work to support Senator LIass’s Lights Out bill in the legislature next session.

We are currently working on a video about Lights Out for the “Edmonds Naturally” YouTube channel. We have flown a drone over Edmonds at night to get a birdseye view of lights followed up by ground level photos. So far, it’s obvious that the car dealers have the brightest lights left on after 10pm.

In the last week there have been between 1-3.7 million birds migrating south over Snohomish County each night according to Cornell University Bird Cast https://dashboard.birdcast.org/region/US-WA-061.