Pacific Northwest

Breaking in the New [Tern] Lens

May 7, 2012 Birds

So little time … and so little sun … but I grabbed some moments during Seattle’s first crystal days to break in the new lens. It’s four years in coming — four years of anticipating — four years of honing my skills on my trusty and tough 70-300mm (f4.0-5.6). This gift from my mate is [...]

I Felt Like an Osprey Paparazzo …

May 5, 2012 Birds

… saying (silently), c’mon, Osprey, look to the sun, a little catch light in the eye, please. Shot at 600mm equivalent and cropped.

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Thursday on the Beach With Brant

April 30, 2012 Animal Behavior

On the surface, Brant Geese — in this case, Pacific Brant or Black Brant or Branta bernicla — are a marvel to behold. That’s but a superficial observation. There’s a lot more to a Brant than her aesthetic, but let’s face it, aesthetics form our first impressions. Clustered together like Tribbles, they call out in [...]

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Meanwhile … Back at the Cell Tower

April 22, 2012 Animal Behavior

When I last left the Cell Tower Osprey, they were in an apparent tussle over their nesting site. Photographically speaking, I chose the wrong time for this week’s visit. But, I was in the neighborhood just after dawn and figured I’d drop in for a few minutes. The only place to photograph this tower is [...]

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Why It’s Important to Look Closer … for Birds in Trouble

April 20, 2012 Birds

This post contains one image of a long-deceased gull, just FYI. You’d think I would have learned my lesson last year, with the dead gull I found wrapped around a deterrent wire on a nearby warehouse … or the gulls we untangled last fall from a fish-pen net. But, in fairness, this location was difficult [...]

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Osprey Noir

April 19, 2012 Animal Behavior

I figured it was about time I added to my Bird Noir series. I was on Elliott Bay, looking out for the re-tern of the terns — Caspian Terns — when I saw this Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) flying toward me. I pre-focused where I thought she might be fishing, but she veered off to my [...]

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Showdown at the Osprey Cell Tower

April 18, 2012 Animal Behavior

Three’s a crowd … even in the Osprey world. I’ll get back to that thought in a minute. There are two Osprey nesting platforms within three miles of our place, plus several others within ten miles. Last week, all of the Osprey returned to my local spots within the span of a few days. I [...]

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Steelhead Youth

April 16, 2012 Endangered Species

Puget Sound steelhead travel through the Ballard Locks at a fraction of their glory-day numbers. According to this post at the Friends of the Ballard Locks blog, two to three thousand steelhead used to migrate through the locks. Now, if visitors see just one steelhead looking back at them through the window, they’re lucky. A [...]

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Great Blue Squiggles

April 13, 2012 Birds

I guess it’s Composite Week, since this is my second Photoshop posting in a few days. We saw this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) fishing for sculpin (mostly) in a nearby Seattle marina. I’m always drawn to reflections of boat masts in smooth or rippled water, and I loved the way these particular reflections swirled [...]

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Arc of the Kingfisher

April 10, 2012 Birds

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 [...]

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Cool & Totipalmate

April 7, 2012 Animal Behavior

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 [...]

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Say It’s Only a Cormorant Moon …

April 1, 2012 Birds

… sailing over a cardboard sea. The sun came out and I raced down to the locks where, just a few days before, I’d seen the most perfect light on alighting herons. There’s a rookery that spans a ravine, the northern terminus of which is at the Ballard Locks. Several Great Blue Heron couples (Ardea [...]

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Beautiful Things in Humble Places

March 31, 2012 Seattle & Vicinity

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” ~ Camille Pissarro. I can’t see the world the way Pissarro did, let alone paint it. My own mother creates watercolors like Georgia O’Keefe’s, but I can’t draw a stick figure in proper perspective. In other words, were it not [...]

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Too Much House, But Still Some Goose

March 29, 2012 Geese and Swans

In 1905, the Duwamish native Cheshiahud told The Seattle Times that he could no longer catch trout in Lake Union because “too much house now — they all gone.” 1. Seattle’s city-central lake was then known to the Duwamish as meman harsh, or “little lake,” surrounded by marshes and streams that fed both the lake [...]

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Going Wide With Wildlife

March 27, 2012 Birds

I loved my first zoom lens so much, I would have kept it around my neck and under my pillow 24/7 were I not worried about the integrity of the front element … and my neck. I suspect that a lot of wildlife watchers like myself feel profoundly altered after shooting through their first tele [...]

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From the Primordial Soup of Lake Union: American Coots

March 17, 2012 Birds

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 [...]

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Utility Pole Eagles

March 13, 2012 Birds

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 [...]

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Crow Casting a Pellet [Almost]

March 2, 2012 Animal Behavior

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 [...]

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Was it Something I Said?

February 25, 2012 Birds

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, [...]

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These Are Not Leaves

February 23, 2012 Birds

My loose homage to Rene Magritte. They were so quiet, fluttering in the wind just like the leaves. Not even the softest Starling whistle came from that tree. When you’ve birded or photographed enough, or sometimes even just a bit, it’s wonderful how the slightest anomaly then draws the eye. This was more than slight, [...]

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When the Crane Calls

February 21, 2012 Birds

Sandhill Cranes have distinctive calls you recognize immediately, once you know them. They rattle, and croak and reverberate through the estuary. The first time you hear that sound, you’ll expect something magnificent, prehistoric, indefinable. And that’s precisely what you’ll encounter. Cranes have ancestry reaching into the Miocene Epoch, 24 to 5 million years ago. They [...]

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First … Signs of Snowies

February 16, 2012 Birds

Boundary Bay, British Columbia Edited to add (2/17/12): Since I posted this, I’ve had discussions with a few photographers who disagree with my stance on this owl/space/ethics issue. They’ve told me it’s acceptable for photographers to be out in the marshes, as long as they don’t flush the owls. I wanted to find out what [...]

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Low Tide Life

February 15, 2012 Birds

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.” ~ John Muir

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Enter … the ‘ood Duck

February 9, 2012 Birds

One experience can change a word forever. This experience took place in Venice years ago, on a guided tour of the Doge’s Palace. Our lovely guide, who couldn’t have been more enthused about his subject matter, simply could not pronounce the letter “W.” So, we took note of the palace’s ‘ooden beams, the historic ‘ooden [...]

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Moon Roost

February 7, 2012 Bird Noir

click for larger image Every night, they dart under the highway bridge, buzzing boaters as their wings slice the air above the channel. Cormorants, nature’s flying and diving machines, are sleek and malleable to the point of being reptilian. Everything about the cormorant says speed … everything except parking it at the roost. As branches [...]

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GooseORama

February 4, 2012 Birds

This was a much better day for the Snow Geese — better than my last visit to Snow Goose Central. Hunting season is done, and all of the goose shooting on Fir Island is now camera-only. I started off at this field with one other photographer, and by the time I left, there were six [...]

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Eagle Noir

February 2, 2012 Bird Noir

I joke (but it’s true) that my best eagle and osprey in moments in the Northwest happen in silhouette. There’s the issue of light, and how low and flat it tends to be in the winter. There’s also the issue of my luck — where the light is perfect, I’m pointed in the right direction, [...]

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These Feet are Made for Diving

January 31, 2012 Ducks and Others

Ducks have reason to be nervous around us humans in the winter, and diving ducks are always dive-ready if danger is imminent. Sometimes, I refrain from even pointing my lens at ducks, having learned that this act alone can be a stressor for them. Almost all flying ducks will divert course, even a little, when [...]

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Bald Eagles Wear the Pants

January 29, 2012 Pacific Northwest

At the height of Bald Eagle season in Rockport and Marblemount, along the Skagit River, you’ll see dozens of eagles, lumbering across the sand bars, dragging and pillaging salmon carcasses. I like to say that birds like pigeons have jodhpurs — with flared plumes tapering into claws. Eagles, on the other hand, look like they’re [...]

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Giving Birds a Fair Distance

December 11, 2011 Birds

Off-season, I regularly walk the trail loops at Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. It’s one of the longer spurs of waterfront access in a city where much of the waterfront is privately held. So, when I’m feeling homesick for San Francisco Bay and the miles of open trails, I find solace at the Arboretum. In [...]

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Pacific Northwest

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