Chris Anderson said it back in 2004: The Internet has a long tail . . . so long, in fact, that a person can leap from being a writer one day, to a budding amphipodologist the next. This may not be the anecdote Anderson had in mind when he wrote about the long tail….
Favorite Flickr Moments . . .
. . . when a Flickr comment captures an image better than you did . . . I shot this photo at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, during a break in one of last winter’s storms. The winds buffeted the bluffs so hard, the ravens were flinging themselves into the headwinds, stationary — suspended in…
A Murder of Crows
My friend Britta turned me on to this PBS Nature special: A Murder of Crows. It’s a fascinating and touching look at crow intelligence. It’s also heartbreaking in spots, as it covers the crows’ adaptation to us and our antagonism toward them. Crows share some of our traits — traits which allow them to adapt…
The Enculturation of Wigeons
There’s an Eliza Doolittle thing happening at the local duck lake. Hugh and I have been frequenting our neighborhood shoreline on Puget Sound — a local, private beach where we hold the golden ticket: an access pass. It’s a coup really, because a lot of the shoreline is privately held here in Washington. This short…
The Old Things Go, Not One Lasts
Autumn Movement by Carl Sandburg I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things…
Crow on the Outside, Looking In
There’s a wetlands pond not far away, with a group of friendly, habituated Mallards . . . and a small contingent of alert, migrating ducks (this week: Wigeons) who keep to themselves in the shade of the reeds, as far from humans as possible. The Mallards approach any new human. The possibility of food from…
Fly Away Home (and Safe)
As we inched our way toward the cranes, I heard the sound that always shatters my serenity like, well, a shotgun. Because it was a shotgun — very close by. In a clearing across the river, just a hop and a skip from where we were …
Great Blue Dreams
We came upon this Great Blue Heron, perched statuesque above a leash-free dog area. The dog walkers didn’t look up. Neither did the dogs. But my eye is always looking …
Dine Like an Eagle
We came upon this scene on a Seattle area beach . . . a small stretch of private community beach where we have a pass. Planted on the pebbles, way far away, too far for my 70-300mm lens, we watched as this Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) wrangled with a second eagle, a group of crows,…
Spillway
At the Ballard Locks there’s a mist that hangs over the spillway, the meeting of nature and machine, sending and suspending droplets across the sky and onto my camera lens.