Category: Birds

Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge

I walked Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge for the first time in years today and had a delightful time, despite sporadic bursts of machine gun fire and thudding booms of artillery pieces drifting across the valley from Ft. Lewis.

For a very short time I had a chance to experience this area the way pioneers must have experienced it, nature at its most beautiful.

I really didn’t have too many expectations; I just wanted to try out a new 400 mm telephoto lens, the one I got to take bird pictures.

Strangely enough, one of the first birds I encountered was a Kingfisher, a bird I didn’t even know existed in the Pacific Northwest until I read a Tacoma Tribune article about Point Defiance Park last Sunday. Once I saw the article , I decided that I would get a picture of each of the birds they showed.

It’s not as good a picture as the one above or some others I took and will probably post later, but I was simply delighted the picture I took of a bird sitting on top a dead snag turned out to be the very bird I most wanted to get a picture of. Hopefully it will follow the recent pattern of the Western Tiger Swallowtail and the Hummingbird, with gradually improving pictures until I get one I’m really happy with and can move on in pursuit of another perfect moment.

Friends

As you already know if you read this blog at all regularly, I tend to be obsessive. So it should come as no great surprise that I’m posting yet another hummingbird photo.

I noticed the other day that there is more than one hummingbird in the yard. I know that because I saw one chasing another one away from the garden. Then I started noticing that the colors on the hummingbirds I’ve been seeing were quite different.

A week ago I wondered if the hummingbirds had all left. After I finally captured what I considered a “passable” photograph yesterday, they seemed to be everywhere, ready to pose at the slightest request, much in the same way that “rare” cars like the one you just bought seem to appear everywhere.

A Quiet Moment

While working in the garden yesterday I was constantly distracted by our neighborhood hummingbird, the one I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of for over a year now. Of course, every time I had the camera he/she disappeared.

Today I decided to combine my meditation practice with picture taking. After about a half hour of quiet waiting he briefly showed up, too briefly to manage to get anything but a blurred image of him.

An hour later, he showed up again, and apparently reassured by my lack of motion, stuck around much longer, of course a minute in hummingbird time is probably equal to a day of our time. I’m not sure I know which shot I like best, but I found it interesting that he seemed to like this rather bland plant, not just the brilliant red one I first thought was attracting him:

Amazingly, I learned more about my little front yard in the hour I sat there attentively then I’d learned in the nearly two years I’ve lived here. First, there’s a crow’s nest right across the street with some very demanding young crowlings. There’s apparently a tit nest in the cedar tree in the front yard, judging from the busy adults that swoop in and out regularly. The brilliant yellow butterfly whose picture has also eluded me lo these many years, stops by, or almost stops by, irregularly.

It’s amazing what you can see and hear when you actually manage to stand still for just a little while.