Category: Special Places

Just Out of Reach

It was a beautiful day today here in the Great Pacific Northwest, a hint summer isn’t that far away. I had a great walk around the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, spending the day with a fellow birder who happened to be a complete stranger.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great day for photographs. In fact, almost everything I wanted to shoot seemed temptingly out of reach. While it was nice to know that my favorite bird, the Belted Kingfisher, had returned, it would have been nicer if I had been able to get closer than this to get a decent photo.

I nearly got a great picture of this Northern Harrier as it swooped over my head, but ended up only being able to get this picture of it looking back at us to see if it had made an impression by buzzing us, it had.

The greatest non-shot of the day, though was the one of this fabled Snowy Owl, my first sighting of it. Of course, it was so far away I would have needed a $10,000 lens in order to get a decent picture of it, but, take my word for it, that white blob there on the log is, indeed, a Snowy Owl.

It was a rush to see the Snowy Owl at all, no matter how distant.

And, strangely, it’s comforting to know many things in my life still lie just out of reach.

A Fondness for Furry Animals

Despite my well-documented attraction to birds, it’s not birds per se, but, rather, nature in all its magnificent manifestations that holds me in thrall.

Fortunately the awareness needed to find and photograph birds has revealed a whole new world, a world made up of much more than birds. I’ve seen more mammals in less than a year than I did in the thirty plus years I was hiking and backpacking regularly. Perhaps slowing down isn’t all bad, after all.

Friday, trying to capture my first-ever picture of an American Kestrel

that kept flying back and forth from his distant perch to the ground to catch insects, I caught a glimpse of what I suspect is a Long-Tailed Weasel (perhaps because there was picture posted nearby saying to watch for them) swimming down the creek,

emerging occasionally to search through the underbrush for a quick snack.

Strangely, the excitement I felt from getting my first-ever picture of an American Kestrel quickly paled beside the thrill of getting a picture of this rather insignificant mammal.

I sometimes fear that even at my advanced age I share my grandchildren‘s fondness for fuzzy animals, though such a weakness would obviously belie Mike’s perception that I’m ironic and sardonic.

Variations On a Theme

Birds seemed scarce at Belfair Saturday, but a large number of Red-Winged Blackbirds seemed to be holding a spring musical festival.

There were hundreds of male Red-Winged Blackbirds, all apparently trying to sing louder than their competitors.

Some were perched on cattails singing loudly

Others serenaded us from branches hanging over the pond:

While others showered us with music from above:

They sang so beautifully, I could almost believe they were singing for us.

American Bittern

When I awakened to sunshine this morning, I decided today was the day to revisit Nisqually Refuge since I hadn’t been there in over two weeks.

Despite the calendar, spring was definitely in the air as I was greeted by multiple bird songs, one of them by this little bird, clearly demonstrating why it’s called a Song Sparrow:

As I walked along I felt like I’d been dropped into Disney’s Song of the South.

When I encountered this little American Bittern beside the trail, though, I wondered if I hadn’t really been dropped into the Twilight Zone as I watched it transform itself. When I first saw it, it was so squat and so short that I didn’t immediately recognize it as a Bittern.

It was apparently trying to scare me with it’s size, and, though it didn’t manage that, it did give me a bit of a shock when it suddenly became very tall as it moved away:

However, when I returned to the same spot nearly four hours later, it appeared perfectly normal, apparently pretending to be a small bunch of reeds:

I’m constantly amazed by my encounters with nature, even when it’s an encounter with an animal that I mistakenly assume that I’m familiar with.