I have a few terabytes of backlogged photos I’ve never posted — many of which should probably stay archived. But, I thought for sure I’d published this one. When I searched my blog archives, it appears this image never touched the pages of The Quark. This is a banner I created last year of a…
Cool & Totipalmate
It begins with a twig in the bill and the throaty croak of the swamp. They’re creatures of the marshes, the Great Blues, now on ascent to a season in the trees where nests incubate eggs, and where clumsy young legs will soon dawdle on branches until they get their wings. They call this place…
Bird Photography Outtakes
Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in Seattle, Washington. Okay, I’m pretty careful when I’m photographing around roosts. And, cormorants give you plenty of warning with all of the guano splatters below their perches. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I got hit by a big bird … so, it’s funny that on the…
From the Primordial Soup of Lake Union: American Coots
American Coots creep out of lakes like creatures of the bog, drawing up mud with their lobed toes as they march, single file, from the water to their feeding grounds. I once watched hundreds emerge, one by one, from the low-tide flats at San Leandro Marina in California, forming a line of black baubles from…
Staging “Nature” Shots
A friend of mine recommended 500px as an alternative to Flickr. Between Flickr, Facebook, Linked In and my inactive Twitter account, I’m maxed out on social networking, something I’ve never been all that hot on, anyway. But, I meandered over to 500px because the interface is supposedly beautiful, and the community gets rave reviews. The…
Utility Pole Eagles
Back in the Bay Area, if someone had described to me a place where Bald Eagles huddled on every utility pole like pigeons or Starlings, I would have thought it must be Alaska … or somewhere along the Samuel Morse telegraph lines of the mid-1800s. I didn’t expect that just two hours north — through…
Crow Casting a Pellet [Almost]
Sometimes, if there are no birds or wild animals in the vicinity (which is often the case in the heavily-populated parks near my Seattle home) I’ll just sit and take in the scenery …. with camera ready in case something unexpected happens. In Seattle, I can almost always count on crows showing up, even if…
The Origins of Avian Blue
I pulled a few of my Western Bluebird pics from the archives to illustrate the following excerpt. This month’s Smithsonian Magazine has a short piece entitled Why So Blue? by Helen Fields, which explores the natural magic behind bluebird blue: [Ornithologist Richard Prum] discovered that as a blue feather grows, something amazing happens. Inside each…
On Double-Banded Knee
Seattle crows are among the most famous of modern crows, owing to studies by John Marzluff which are featured in A Murder of Crows. This PBS Nature episode looks at Marzluff’s University of Washington (UW) research projects and the crows’ ability to recognize and remember human faces. I’ve seen a few UW-banded crows around town,…
Was it Something I Said?
Spencer Island, Washington — described by Audubon Washington this way: “A cornucopia of species! Come year-round for Bald Eagles, Great Horned Owls, Northern Harriers, Belted Kingfishers – and woodpeckers: Pileated, Downy, and Hairy, plus Northern Flickers and Red-breasted Sapsuckers. Spring-summer find Tree and Violet-green Swallows, plus Ospreys, Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, Western Tanagers, Black-headed Grosbeaks,…
