Month: November 2019

THANKFUL

Leslie and I are spending Thanksgiving with Tyson and Jen this year, the first time we have been able to visit them in Colorado this year. Thankfully, we got here last Saturday and avoided the terrible driving conditions they’ve had the last few days. Thankfully, we don’t have to leave until Monday when roads should be clear and most of the holiday traffic gone.

Of course, there’s much more to be thankful for then a single good day. I’ve been retired for twenty years now and am still going strong with a few minor health setbacks. Life is good as long as I don’t listen to the news or open my emails.

Hopefully your Thanksgiving is going as well.

Mono No Aware

Usually when I look at the garden this time of year all, all I see is work that needs to be done, work I’ve been putting off as long as possible. Still, if you’re desperate for a shot to post to your site and you look through the lens of your camera long enough, you can always find something that might possibly pass as art, particularly if you play with it long enough in Photoshop.

Obviously the Hosta plants are dying off, but their golden color emphasizes the shape of the leaves 

Though I’ll use a blower to clean dead leaves off some places,  I long ago learned that decaying leaves attract birds throughout Fall and Winter, while adding nutrients to the garden in Spring.

The fuchsia is by far the brightest flower left in the garden

but their flowers are so small that the hydrangea, despite beginning to fade, still provides the brightest spot in the Fall garden.

Birding Waughop Lake

Our record-breaking streak of sunny days this late in the year has kept me from finishing Hesse’s third novel, but I figure there will be plenty of rainy days coming up that are better suited for reading.

Leslie was gone, so I took the pickup and drove to the nearby Lake Waughop again.  I was surprised at how low the water was and was wondering where all the ducks had gone since I wasn’t seeing any close to shore.  Turned out there were lots of ducks, but they were all out in the middle of the lake, far too far away for a good shot. 

About the only bird I saw near the shore was this Double-Crested Cormorant.  In the early-morning sunlight this rather plain bird seemed positively elegant to me.

The dominant bird of the day seemed to be the Spotted Towhee,

one of the hardest birds to photograph because it loves to hide in the dense underbrush and warn all nearby birds of your presence.

This Towhee, though, tempted by the fruit in the trees offered a much better pose near the end of my walk.

My favorite shot of the day, though, was this one of a local Steller’s Jay which seemed to best reflect the day’s brilliant blue skies.

Birding at Port Orchard

Often in the winter birding is better at the Port Orchard Marina than at Theler Wetlands, but that wasn’t the case on our last visit; they seemed equally bad, except for the brilliant sunshine.

I did spot my first male Hooded Merganser of the season, but it seemed determined not to see me and swam steadily away from the camera, never turning back to see if I was still trying to capture a shot.

Hundreds of birds were offshore, barely visible with the human eye, though I wasn’t able to spot a single Goldeneye.

The marina itself was remarkably quiet with the exception of a small flock of Surf Scoters feeding on mussels, 

and a single Horned Grebe.

Eventually, those ducks offshore will have to come closer to feed, probably when the sun hides behind the clouds.