Love The One You’re With

Mike took me to Hylebos Wetlands yesterday, and I was looking forward to getting some great pictures. Unfortunately, we didn’t see many birds, and most of the plants were so close to the boardwalk that I really couldn’t manage to get a good picture with my 400mm telephoto, the only lens I brought.

Afterwards, though, he took me to see the Weyerhaeuser campus, which is quite beautiful, even though I only got to visit a small part of it. They had a huge pond with tall iris lining it:

It was, in turn, surrounded by natural grasslands, where wildflowers bloomed profusely:

and a Red-tailed Hawk circled overhead,

which, strangely enough, reminded me of Stephen Still’s “If You Can’t Be With the One You Love, Love the One You’re With.

Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge

Summer began with a bang this weekend, with temperatures reaching the low 90’s for the first time this summer. I decided it was past time to visit the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge,and for awhile it seemed like nearly everyone in the Pacific Northwest decided the same thing. The nearly six miles of beach was crammed with people walking or playing on the beach.

The walk was still delightful, but confirming the law that that the number of animals seen is always in inverse proportion to the number of people seen, our wildlife sightings were minimal, though the handout we received at the entrance suggests it’s possible to see more birds and animals here at different times of year than at nearly any other site in the state.

Unfortunately with the exception of the interesting Pigeon Guillemot all we saw was a baby harbor seal and his mother, who seemed to be urging him to swim by himself.

Still, since I had no idea that we even had auks or puffins in the Pacific Northwest, I was more than happy to spend nearly a half hour watching them swim and dive in the surf .