A Little Perspective

Since last Tuesday was supposed to be as sunny as Monday and rain was forecast for the rest of the week, I decided to go to Nisqually Wildlife Refuge since I hadn’t been there since early summer. Unfortunately, birding wasn’t especially good, and as the day wore on I became more and more disenchanted.

With the leaves gone, the distant roar of the freeway and the Burlington-Northern trains became nearly as oppressive as the intermittent thump of Fort Lewis’s heavy artillery and the rat-tat-tat of firing on a distant rifle range. The final insult was the fire of duck hunters directly across the creek from me,

Duck Hunters

so close I almost hit the boardwalk. It was all the more surprising since I hadn’t seen the hunters in their camouflage.

Even my favorite torta at La Fuentes couldn’t convince me that the day hadn’t been a flop. In fact, it wasn’t until I uploaded the pictures and looked at them on the computer screen that I could admit to myself that the day hadn’t been a total disaster.

In fact, if I hadn’t spent the last few weeks deleting numerous Great Blue Heron shots, I might even have considered this

Great Blue Heron

and especially this shot of a heron catching a fish

Great Blue Heron

fairly good shots.

I would probably even consider this shot of a Northern Harrier flying at eye level

 Northern Harrier

before suddenly diving to the ground

Northern Harrier

good shots, too.

Certainly the noise didn’t help, but I suspect a good part of the disappointment came from the fact that I had such high expectations because I’d gotten so many good shots the day before. In comparison, Tuesday certainly seemed like a total flop.

Looking back through six days of steady rain, Tuesday’s outing doesn’t seem nearly as disappointing.