Sneeuwuil – Dutch Le Harfang des neiges – French Sniega puce – Latvian Snøugle – Norwegian Wabagano – Cree Shirofukuro – Japanese ~ Many thanks to Paul Asimow’s Snowy Owl pages for the above excerpt. We don’t yet know if it’s an echo year for Snowy Owls (the year after an irruption), but the Bubo…
On Little Cat Feet in Seattle
Carl Sandburg’s metaphor of fog creeping in “on little cat feet” over the harbor and sky is 21 words of descriptive perfection. But, it wasn’t this gentle, pitter-patter idea of fog that formed me. It was a more treacherous fog, the fog of the mire, the one shrouding fantastical and coal-black specters: The cloud was…
Waxwing Solo
I marked my winters in California by the return of the Cedar Waxwings. A few years ago this is how I would describe my seasonal transition: It starts with a whistle, but a whistle so faint it’s a whisper across the leaves. And then the sound of raindrops, but it’s not rain. It’s the patter…
A Makeshift Hummingbird Feeder Heater
Heating hummingbird feeders was a new thing for me after moving to Seattle. Here, Anna’s Hummingbirds stay through the winter, and although the cold months are relatively temperate, there are enough freezing mornings when nectar turns into slush or ice. My first go-round with enabling the local hummingbirds came our first winter with Mr. Hummingway….
It’s the Time of the Season … for Bird Noir
Without even a wisp of autumn air, Seattle dipped from summer to storm, from a prolonged swelter to a premature December gray, leaving me damp and unrequited. In eighty days without droplets and dew, the Emerald city turned topaz and so dry that even the pigeons, normally preening under nimbostratus showers, looked haggard for the…
Crows on Cairns
A group of young American Crows or Northwestern Crows (or American-Northwestern hybrid crows) foraged around these cairns along Seattle’s waterfront … like sentries in their own Norman towers. Click for Larger Image I don’t know if I’m looking at American or Northwestern Crows when I photograph these corvids in Seattle. The distinction for me —…
Something Spawning This Way Comes
Last year at this time, I wrote about the salmon journeying upstream to their Washington spawning grounds: Salmon are a miracle of navigational skills, sometimes migrating thousands of miles during their years in the ocean, possibly guided by magnestism in the same way homing pigeons navigate with help of the earth’s magnetic fields. Then, salmon…
Draped in Kelp, Below by 8000 Feet
“Under the brine you won’t notice the dark Can stone and steel and horses heels Ever explain the way you feel? From Scapa Flow to Rotherhithe, I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide Oh the heavy water how it enfolds The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow Always, always, always the sea Brilliantine mortality.”…
Bird Rescue, Fishing Gear & Existential Inquiries
This post is (or will be) a rambling confluence of a few different stories. Back in June, I posted about a Brown Pelican I saw flying over Bolsa Chica at dusk. I photographed the bird in silhouette as it trailed a triple-hook fishing lure from its pouch. I obviously have no way of knowing what…
Swifty Monroe
It doesn’t just happen in Monroe … but we took a spontaneous trip to Monroe where it does happen. Vaux’s Swifts, up and down their migration corridor, appropriate chimneys for their nightly roosting ritual. In the Bay Area, the Healdsburg swift event was one of those things I’d always meant to attend but never did….
