Special Places – Page 256

Making Every Hour Count

Last Thursday Skye and I braved the Pacific Northwest rain and managed to get in a short walk before heading back to the warm, dry comfort of my den. I decided it would be a good day to spend trying to archive my photos and clean up my overburdened second hard drive.

At four in the afternoon, though, there was a sudden clearing, and I decided I needed a longer walk, so I headed down to Pt Defiance’s beach. The beach was virtually abandoned because of the rain, but I spent an eventful hour there. It began by spotting these Bald Eagles on a tree above the cliff.

I started to climb the cliff to try to get a better shot of it but thought better of it when I discovered the steep trail was covered in wet leaves .

Luckily I didn’t, because I would have missed this shot of what appears to be a Clark’s Grebe:

my chance to play hide-and-seek with this Kingfisher for the next half hour as he figured out how to stay exactly half the distance of a the boathouse from me and my camera, no matter where I went:

and, finally, this close up of a Giant Blue Heron. I was so close to him that I had to back up in order to get him all in the frame, and he was so intent on the fish within the tank that he totally ignored me the entire time I was there:

Heck, and I didn’t even show you the picture of the harbor seal or the cormorant that came up during the hour and a half I was at the beach.

I’ve walked the shores of Puget Sound for many years without ever seeing as much as I’ve seen in the last three months. It seems the more you open yourself to nature’s wonders the more you see.

Catch of the Day

According to my birding book, Point No Point is “Kitsap County’s destination birding site.�? Unfortunately, my recent trip there might suggest otherwise. Two hours of walking and climbing over driftwood netted me a few gull pictures and this:

Perhaps the pair of Bald Eagles flying overhead explained the lack of birds, but the most memorable moment of the walk came when two large dogs charged me and stood growling and barking at me not much more than two feet away while their owner assured me that they wouldn’t bite, though it was less than comforting knowing they wouldn’t come when he called them.

My trip to the Nature Conservancy’s Foulweather Bluff Reserve wasn’t any more rewarding, birdwise. My photography was limited to some interesting shells:

and this oddity:

It may be a starfish, but, if so, it has more arms than any starfish I’ve ever seen. Still, after twenty-some years of contributing to The Nature Conservancy it was nice to actually visit one of the places I’d helped preserve, even if all I saw was a Great Blue Heron and a flock of Mallards off in the distance.

The catch of the day, though, came at Theler Wetlands where I enjoyed visiting with Butch who spotted this Ringed-Necked Pheasant I’ve seen at a distance several times but never managed to get close to. Today he was so busy eating grain someone had left on the trail that he didn’t look up until I had gotten so close that my telephoto lens could only get a head shot: