I spotted my first migratory ducks on the urban shores of Elliott Bay last week. The new arrivals are on edge — wary and easy to flush. Lifting my lens is enough to send them skittering to the middle of the bay, and I can only imagine what sights and sounds have jarred them into…
The Legend of the White Gallopavo
The color white represents catharsis in alchemy. It’s the point at which a blackened substance, through heat and reactivity, develops a white crust and then puffs into a cloud inside the alchemist’s flask. It’s the stage at which future possibilities become apparent as a material is transformed from one to the other. And it’s symbolized…
Gull Chicks and Gateway Birds
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to…
The Magical Mystery Tour of Tent Caterpillars
When I saw the first signs of tent caterpillars outside our flat, I kept the sighting to myself. We have a neighbor, a home owner just up the hill who screams at crows — and who dead-heads her plants to the point of denuding them. I knew if she saw this tiny tent on the…
Faces of the 18th Weir
They sit suspended at the 18th weir, these scaled faces in the sockeye crowd. It’s the window to their water world, the portal from ocean to stream to lake, where their gills remember the taste of fresh after years in the salty sea — and where they lead — at least in part — by…
Clever, Corrugated Starlings
With starlings, I am often an outlier, even among people who share my conservation ethics and love for wildlife. That’s because I appreciate starlings in a way that defies conventional dislike for the species in the United States. I wrote about this in a 2009 post about European Starlings and their introduction to the U.S….
Sleeping With the Fishes
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen an Osprey napping with a fish in his talons. Last year, while observing the platform way across Seattle’s long-abused-but-recovering Duwamish River I watched a male Osprey land on a utility pole, clutching a half-eaten meal. A crow who’d been tailing the Osprey, landed alongside. The Osprey perched, adjusted…
A Pelagic Housewarming Gift
I should stop making excuses for shooting in damp, dark conditions. It is, after all, the Pacific Northwest. But, well … I was shooting in damp, dark conditions, standing on the car deck of a Washington State Ferry at Anacortes, in an ISO 5000 drizzle. Hugh — who’s become a better bird spotter than I…
Please Brake for Birds
It seems like common sense … to slow or stop the car if you see an animal on the road. But, in recent weeks, I’ve had several incidents where birds were clearly in harm’s way and people refused to either stop or take even 30 seconds off their commute to let an animal exit the…
Great Blue Resilience
A few weeks ago, I walked by the Great Blue Heron rookery a short distance from our place. I expected to see the six or eight heron couples, draped over their nests in anticipation of egg hatching … or maybe even the first raspy calls of young chicks rustling in the alders. Instead, this is…
