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| The boardwalk at Nisqually |
There's some question as to whether we'd actually visited Nisqually on more than one Superbowl Sunday before, but we'd gone at least one year which is enough to count as an established tradition, at least in my mind. (It occurs to me that I was at the Sorrento Hotel for a dinner with Reinhold Messner and John Roskelley on another Seahawks Superbowl night, but that's not something I see being repeated in this lifetime.)
Regardless, this last Sunday we got ourselves up and out of the house relatively promptly (aka on the road before noon) and spent the changeable afternoon wandering around what is now officially called the "
Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge."
It was fine day for it, a little misty and atmospheric to begin with,
with some surprising clearing thanks to some somewhat serious wind. We
didn't see Rainier, and we likewise didn't see the saw-whet owl that has been reported
(and harassed) by any number of birders and photographers over the past
month, but the resident great horned owl was there to be seen, along
with a lovely downy woodpecker, a number of song sparrows, some very
handsome robins, a brown creeper, a gobsmacking harrier, and any number
of waterfowl and shorebirds. And the scenery was quite nice.
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| Atmospheric trees |
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| A few of the mass of peeps along the seemingly solid Nisqually River |
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| Another bit of atmospheric landscape |
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| A helpful family pointed out what we're told was a muskrat |
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| Robins just do not get the respect they deserve; this is a damned handsome bird. |
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| Scott took this one; we're calling it "The Wyeth" |
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| Harrier in flight over the large field. My, she was yar. |
