seattle

Moon Roost

February 7, 2012 Birds

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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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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Tribute to a Great Heron … a Blue One

January 24, 2012 Birds

I’m one of those people who can’t even give an injured quail a ride in the car without bonding (just a little) to the outcome. Similarly, when I’m out photographing — in those cases where I frequent a location and see the same animals repeatedly — I develop a keen interest in their well-being. For [...]

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Ice Storm

January 19, 2012 Macrocosm

Macros of the ice crystals on our windows this morning. * Shot with my Panasonic FZ50 bridge camera plus a Raynox-250 snap-on macro lens. Photographed in Seattle, during the first snow storm of 2012.

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No Frozen Hummingbirds, Please

January 6, 2012 Birds

In the winter of 2011, my hummingbird nectar froze into a giant lifesaver of an ice cube. I’m a Californian which means I’m used to nectar that ferments into birdie moonshine after a few days in the sun. But last year we migrated north to Seattle … at the same time Anna’s Hummingbirds decide not [...]

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Bird Noir

December 3, 2011 Art

There are wildlife photographers who apologize for any urban elements — like street lamps — in their bird images. I embrace those shots, for three reasons: I admire the rugged survivalists that are urban birds and wildlife. What we throw at them in the way of obstacles, pollution, windows, automobiles, poisons, traps, wires and electricity, [...]

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You Thinking What I’m Thinking?

December 2, 2011 Animal Behavior

I saw a huge group of crows scrounging for grubs and snacks in a vacant field near the Seattle waterfront. Since it was raining when I left home, I packed nothing but my rain gear and a point-and-shoot … just in case. I guess I’m hard-headed because I should have learned by now that Seattle [...]

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Fly On Sweet Angel

November 28, 2011 Gulls & Terns

Angel came down from heaven yesterday
She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me
And she told me a story yesterday,
About the sweet love between the moon and the deep blue sea;

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Home is Where the Cell Tower Is

November 25, 2011 Raptors

Sequestered indoors for the rain, I’ve been sorting through my photo archives, hoping to cull my duds, once and for all. I came upon my gallery of Osprey shots … taken this summer as I checked in weekly with a local nesting couple. These two never did produce any young. But I hope to see [...]

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I’m Not a Birder … and I Also Love Canada Geese

November 19, 2011 Geese and Swans

Here’s the ‘condensed’ chronology of how I became that someone who is not a birder: Age 0 to 4: My first (and only) nanny was a German Shepherd. Also, age 0 to 4, born into a family of animal lovers and mushroom foragers. Age 5 to 13: Living as an expat in Europe, left to [...]

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Barring the Hat

September 4, 2011 Animal Behavior

My first wild encounter with a Barred Owl in Seattle culminated in the photo below. Based on this experience, my advice to children in raptor territory is: avoid wearing plush toy animals on your backpack as the dusk hunting hour approaches. A boy was walking along a wooded path with his mother, a fuzzy toy [...]

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Teaching the Kids to Forage

August 30, 2011 Animal Behavior

Juvenile gulls are as determined to get free food from their parents– as their parents are to wean them from the freebies. I’ve seen many adult gulls swimming or flapping away from their begging youngsters, forcing the juvies to forage on their own. I haven’t often watched a parent gull patiently teach the babies to [...]

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Climbing the [Salmon] Ladder to Success

August 10, 2011 Birds

Images taken at Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, aka Ballard Locks, in Seattle Washington. Summer means salmon runs at the Ballard Locks fish ladder . . . twenty-one watery steps from Puget Sound, to the ship canal, to the fresh water spawning grounds where the returning salmon were born. Salmon are a miracle of navigational skills, [...]

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And Osprey Makes Two

July 6, 2011 Animal Behavior

So far, that’s all I’ve seen at this nesting site . . . two diligent Osprey, bringing each other fish and taking turns sitting. The structure of the cell phone tower obscures the interior of the nest, so I see only what happens on the rafters outside. To date, it’s been just a male and [...]

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The Turns of Terns

June 6, 2011 Animal Behavior

I’ve described terns, with their distinct calls, as aerial barflies with too much whiskey and smoke on the voice box. Each tern is raspy in its own way, and Caspian Terns have a sharp croak that pierces the air over my balcony. They’re huddled on a warehouse rooftop one minute, hundreds of them, blurred by [...]

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Anthropomorphizing a Caspian-Peregrine Tussle

June 3, 2011 Gulls & Terns

I’ve been grabbing Seattle’s ever-so-fleeting sun breaks to photograph a group of Caspian Terns who fish every evening on Puget Sound. I’ll post those shots soon. As I was packing up my tripod tonight, I saw the telltale movement and wing shape of a Peregrine overhead. She was riding the thermals up and out of [...]

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Spring Spiderlings

May 30, 2011 Arachnids/Spiders

I saw what looked like a clump of mud sticking to the wall outside my kitchen window. It looked, at first, like the remnant of a Cliff Swallow nest . . . the muddy scars I saw frequently in the Bay Area — the artifacts of their once viable mud mortar homes. But some part [...]

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No Dropped Calls

May 11, 2011 Animal Behavior

This Osprey doesn’t have to worry about mobile phone dead zones at home — nesting, as he is, at the top of a cell tower. Osprey love the tall platforms of human invention, but the settings can take their toll, too — in the form of power outages, or even electrical harm to the birds. [...]

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Under a Watchful Eye

May 8, 2011 Baby Animals

Happy Mother’s Day! Canada Goose parent and goslings, photographed at Lake Union in Seattle, Washington.

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