Last month, Hugh and I took a spontaneous and soggy photo walk through Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam, Washington. For a few weeks at the end of April and beginning of May, hundreds of thousands of migrating sandpipers, Dunlins, plovers, dowitchers and Red Knots feed and rest on the Refuge’s mud flats and…
Birds Flying High … You Know How I Feel
[My homage to Nina Simone, in the form of blurred wings and texturized Dunlins.] When thousands of shorebirds frolic on the mire, their wingbeats rattle like seashells strung in the wind … just the lightest of chimes, near silent except for the rush of air over 15,000 pairs of wings. They become a coil, spiraling…
I Wish I Was the Moon
Full moon rising orange over Seattle last night … the real moon, not Photoshopped into the background. 🙂 I Wish I Was the Moon – Neko Case How will you know if you found me at last ‘Cause I’ll be the one, be the one, be the one With my heart in my lap I’m…
ReTerning to Bolsa Chica
The foot bridge is a crossing over a moat, into a kingdom of feathers at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. In this regenerated, re-planted Bolsa Bay, bird calls and murmurs bubble up from the terns, Sanderlings, scoters, avocets, grebes, plovers, pelicans, sparrows, Willets and egrets who call this haven home. The marsh is barely shielded from…
Welcome Back, Osprey!
Four of our six Seattle neighborhood Ospreys returned last week from the long haul of their migration. If you haven’t seen the tracking maps showing Osprey travel routes, take a look at this website: Osprey migration maps. For these studies, Ospreys are fitted with light satellite transmitters that fall off after two to three years….
Herons + Friends With Totipalmate Feet
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…
The Kingfisher Wasn’t Born to Think About It
“The kingfisher rises out of the black wave like a blue flower, in his beak he carries a silver leaf. I think this is the prettiest world — so long as you don’t mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness? There…
Sea Lion Branding in Oregon
Because this is happening a few hours from home, I’m posting to bring some attention to the issue. I haven’t included any graphic photos, but the subject matter is the hazing and culling of California sea lions. Just south of our Washington border, in Astoria, Oregon, the Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) is trapping…
Low Tide Discoveries at Discovery Park
Images and video shot with my Olympus OM-D, E-M5 (micro four thirds) + Lumix 100-300mm lens. The bluffs above South Beach at Seattle’s Discovery Park are layered records of glacial history. There’s Vashon Till (mixed rocks, sand and silt), Esperance Sand, Lawton Clay (a blue-grey clay and silt) and Kitsap Formation sediments. The beach itself…
She, the Fusiform One
“She” could be a “he,” this harbor seal, and only she knows — stirring from the depths and shallows of Elliott Bay, gliding, reflected alongside us. She rounds the rock bend … she, the fusiform one, tapered and sleek … propelled through the tide by hind flippers. In a pinniped world where there’s no strong,…
