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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. |
we've been lucky enough in the last 25 years of living here, to have seen a pileated woodpecker twice... but not in the last few years i'm sorry to say: too much logging around here has driven them out, i'm sure... we've also seen a few owls, lots of robins and myriads of small birds that we've mis-identified numerous times... there used to be lots of ravens but they've mostly disappeared, also...
ReplyDeleteWe tend to see pileateds in spurts: nothing for a long stretch and then we see them repeatedly and then nothing again. A few years ago there was one who was very interested in Scott's shoes. Owls are my obsession; what sort do you see? This weekend, however, it was a number of robins and juncos who were doing their best to pull me out of a very bad mood. I guess I like all the birds. . . . .
DeleteMore about that pileated here: http://maryjmetz.blogspot.com/2015/05/memorial-weekend-sunday-was-largely-for.html
Delete(And where do you live, with the logging and vanished ravens?)
/Users/m1/Desktop/Home/garden stuff/forest related/100_6245.JPg
ReplyDeleteMary and I live on a 19 acre, wooded plot surrounded by industrial forest. She said she's heard a flammulated owl and we've seen and heard great horned owls, and more commonly, barred owls, as well as occasional others so far unidentified... i was walking one of our trails one day and heard a funny hissing sound; it didn't register for a moment, then i went back and found this young one (picture won't download for some reason: sorry) sitting on the ground, very still... if i got too close, it hissed... when i went back later it was gone... it was either a nestling of a great grey or a barred... probably the latter as the former is not known in this area... tx for your interest...