Category: Special Places

An American Mink

With Monday looking like the best day of the week and innumerable chores facing me the rest of the week, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and head out to Nisqually Monday.

Wanting to get better pictures of the Great Horned Owl than I was able to get before, I took my monopod with the new swiveling head, and, with the cooperation of the sunshine, I was able to get the best pictures of the owl I’ve gotten so far:

Unfortunately, using the monopod also meant missing the best picture yet of an Otter because when one crossed the trail in front of me, I wasn’t able to get the camera set up before it disappeared, another lesson in the inevitable tradeoffs that life seems to demand. Despite our best efforts, we can’t seem to have everything, can we?

As if I hadn’t already learned that lesson, birding turned out to be rather routine, with nary a new species in sight, though the highlight of the day was capturing this shot of what I was told was an American Mink crossing the trail:

Amazingly, he came much closer than this, but he came so close that I couldn’t focus my 400mm telephoto lens and ended up with a blur of brown as he ran down the bank next to us.

After seeing this animal, I’m sure that the earlier animal I though might be long-tailed weasel wasn’t a mink, as a fellow traveler suggested, since this animal was two to three times bigger than the one I captured a shot of before.

Another Nice Day

It was too nice of a day to sit inside reading, so I headed out again for The Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, birding didn’t match the spectacular weather as I didn’t see a single new species today. I first thought this was the first time I’d photographed a Green-Winged Teal but it turned out I’d already gotten a distant shot of one near Port Townsend.

I also got another picture of an American Bittern, a relatively rare bird I just can’t avoid running into lately:

I also got another picture of a Bald Eagle, though, they, too, are becoming as common as Great Blue Herons

My favorite shot of the day, though, was this vastly improved shot of a Male American Kestrel, possible because the lighting conditions were great today :

It’s supposed to rain most of the this week, though, so I should have time to read Rexroth’s books on Chinese and Japanese poetry.

Mourningcloak Butterfly

I was surprised when this Mourningcloak butterfly flittered through the woods Monday morning considering how cold it’s been.

Looking at the bare trees, I wondered where the caterpillar could have found enough food to survive. Turns out it didn’t; the Mourningcloak overwinters and emerges when temperatures rise.

I felt lucky just to identify this butterfly after a few minutes of searching on the web, but once I’d actually identified it I was able to locate even more facts and details about it.

I’m amazed how the internet enables us to learn things we would never have been able to learn in the past because of the excessive time required to look things up in a library.

Time I can spend, instead, outside enjoying those things I really want to know more about.