It’s like waiting for a geyser to erupt … or an eclipse. There’s a start time to this endeavor. At 6:45p, we’re told, a North American beaver or two (or more) will swim into this stew of lily pads and systematically take them down for dinner. They have a lodge not far away, this family of…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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,…
City Bird, Winter Light
Photographed at Union Bay Natural Area in Seattle • Olympus E-3 + Zuiko 50-200mm + EC14 I’m tracking, with my lens, a Yellow-rumped Warbler who’s bouncing around her kingdom. She stops then hops, as warblers often do. And, for a split second, she clears the branches and looks back at me, bearing the criss-cross shadows…
Studies in Ghost Geese
The first time I witnessed a blast of Snow Geese I described it this way: The sound of flocking snow geese is sometimes described as a “cacophony,” a “symphony,” a “storm” — a “baying of hounds,” a “noise blizzard.” The sound, in fact, varies. There’s a comfortable warbling of goose grumbles and calls as the…
Fellow Prisoners of Splendor
“In a world older and more complete than ours, [animals] move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time,…
