seattle

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 [...]

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 occasionally with a local nesting couple. These two never did not appear to produce any young, but there [...]

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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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Kingfisher of the New Wave

April 3, 2011 Birds

photos ©ingridtaylar – email me for permissions Big-haired, 80s-style, Belted Kingfisher — on a windy day in Des Moines, Washington. Kingfishers are famously elusive when they see a lens pointed at them. This girl had good fishing prospects at the Des Moines Marina, so she put up with me for the sake of her prime [...]

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Les Mouettes Aimes Les Petits Pains

March 31, 2011 Birds

photos ©ingridtaylar – email me for permissions mouette = from Middle French mouette = from Old French moette = diminutive of Old French maoe (Anglo-Norman mave, mauve) = from Old English mǣw (“seagull”) = from Proto-Germanic *maihwaz, *maiwaz (“seagull”) Someone challenged these gulls with leftovers from the patisserie. If a gull can swallow a starfish, [...]

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Growing Up Alone

March 30, 2011 Flora

photos ©ingridtaylar – email me for permissions First signs of spring at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle. I posted a mini history of the Montlake-Fill-to-Union-Bay-Natural-Area transformation over at Seattleography.

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Anatomy of a Cormorant Landing

March 25, 2011 Animal Behavior

Double-crested Cormorant – Phalacrocorax auritus. Photographed with my Olympus E-3 and Zuiko 70-300mm. The birds were silhouetted in late afternoon light, high ISO 1000, some post-processing NR to compensate for the darker conditions.. I shot this series along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle. If you’ve watched Double-crested Cormorants [literally] coming home to roost, [...]

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A Great Blue Yawn

March 23, 2011 Herons and Egrets

I watched this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) preening and relaxing for a half hour or so. At the very end of our “visit,” he yawned and held the pose for just a few seconds. I snapped this shot. A bird yawn always takes me back to the chaotic year of looking after two rescued [...]

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The Maw

March 12, 2011 Gulls & Terns

Two of a huge group of gulls, collecting on a duck pond during a fierce, Seattle wind storm.

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Bald Eagle in the Backyard

March 8, 2011 Raptors

This is a huge bonus of living in Seattle: the urban and suburban wildlife includes a multitude of Bald Eagles. This morning, Hugh went into our friends’ garden to fill up their bird feeder — a chore we both kind of enjoy. A huge contingent of birds descends right when our boots leave the scene [...]

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Dating, Bufflehead Style

March 7, 2011 Animal Behavior

I wish I’d been closer than the far reach of my lens, struggling for focus in the thick of weather. I snapped these from the shore, capturing the distant dynamics of a Bufflehead courtship ritual. Two males were vying for the one female pictured here.

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I Preen, Therefore I Am

March 5, 2011 Animal Behavior

If you know birds, you know that preening isn’t cosmetic fluff. It’s a meticulous cleaning and placement of the bird’s survival gear: feathers. Feathers need to be pristine for flight and for insulation. During oil spills, the analogy used about feathers is that a spot of oil on a bird’s plumage is like a hole [...]

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Crow in Snow

February 28, 2011 Corvids

The above American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) was standing behind a short wall with snow on top — and he had a backdrop of snow which created the effect of this portrait. Crow flying against a background of snow-covered trees — and kicking snow off her feet as she takes off. This pair of crows was [...]

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This is not a Duck

February 24, 2011 Marine Mammals

I went out to photograph ducks in this morning’s fresh snow. As I approached the pond, I noticed that ALL of the Mallards (every single one) were sitting on the banks. I felt the reverb of a huge splash in my periphery and thought, wow, big fish. Sturgeon-caliber fish. When “it” resurfaced, “it” had a [...]

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Eagle En Route . . .

February 23, 2011 Ducks and Others

. . . it’s a Seattle thing. First alert — a look overhead and warning calls: American Wigeon first responders leave lone Eurasian Wigeon to contemplate his next move: And he’s off: Safety in numbers: The instigator comes into view: The juvenile Bald Eagle shows little interest in the ducks, catches the thermals, and whirls [...]

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Wigeon Report

February 15, 2011 Ducks and Others

I went to the local duck pond to follow up on the American Wigeon flock that took residence there in the late fall. The one Eurasian Wigeon in the flock is still among them . . . I’m not sure if he has a mate. There were several obvious couplings in the group, with pairs [...]

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In the Reed Dome

January 29, 2011 Herons and Egrets

I saw this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), submerged to the top of its legs, an immersion I haven’t seen often among herons and egrets. Shortly after I snapped the photo, an unlucky fish made a splash in the cattails, and the heron whipped around and disappeared into the camo of the reeds.

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Great Blue, Great Light

January 22, 2011 Herons and Egrets

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in Seattle, Washington. I shot these photos today at Normandy Park Cove, a semi-private beach and enclave where we have temporary access. We’ve seen this heron on multiple occasions, fishing in the creek, foraging through the cattails in the duck pond, perched in the perimeter of Madrone trees. But this [...]

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Watch for Towhees, Flying Low

January 17, 2011 Birds

Spotted Towhees were the elusive ground foragers I never saw enough of in the Bay Area. I’d catch a glimpse as they scuttled under the scrub. Or, occasionally, snapped a photo of one heralding the morning light in the thickets of Tilden Park. My best Spotted Towhee sighting was the trusting bird who let me [...]

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