Category Archives: wildlife

Ospreys on the Hunt

Sitting out by Lake Washington watching the boat and floatplane traffic also provided a view of the local residents fishing.  These residents aren’t the humans on the pier with fishing poles.  These are the ospreys.  There are lots of ospreys that are around the north end of the lake at this time of year.  They are circling overhead looking for targets and then swooping down to catch them.

It is not usual to get them making their catch close in but sometimes you can see them diving in the grab a fish.  However, when they catch something, they do head back passed the shore as they make their way to their nests.  A fish tucked under their body and held in a forward alignment to make it easier to fly with is not a rare sight.  You also can get them circling overhead as they look for some food but I guess nothing too tasty was near me.

Spider Web Engineering

This spider web was attached to one of the towers at Hyakuri.  The web thread was quite a heavy gauge compared to what I normally see and I was fascinated by the way it was attached to the wood.  Multiple strands were attached in a ring forming a cone of thread that merged in to the mainline.  It was quite a feat of engineering.

Seals Just Hanging Out

Seeing aquatic creatures when you are at sea level can be tricky.  If they pop out of the surface, you might spot them if you are paying attention.  Get a bit of elevation and things are suddenly a lot easier to spot.  We reached Point Defiance at the turning point of our hike and stopped to look out across the water.  Straight down below us was a group of seals.  Looking down they were immediately obvious.  They would dive down every once in a while but, given how many of them there were, there were always a few on the surface.  They seemed to be just hanging out near the beach on a sunny day.

Turtles Fighting for Space

The pond in Point Defiance Park was busy with ducks everywhere but they weren’t the only occupants of the water.  There were quite a lot of turtles, particularly given how small the pond was.  There was one rock in the pond that appeared to be the best spot for a turtle.  It was fully occupied.  A couple of other turtles seemed to be interested in getting on but the inhabitants were not intent on sharing and they were “discouraged” from joining.

Fish Selection

This post is about fish.  No other reason than I was running through some shots and came across these pictures from the Ocean Coast Aquarium in Newport OR.  Taking pictures of fish through thick aquarium glass is a bit of a crapshoot as the distortion can be bad and the potential for reflections is high.  Since fish can be so fascinating, though, I always give it a go.  Most of the shots turn out to be disappointing but a few work out.  Some of the fish have happy looking faces (allowing for some anthropomorphizing) while others look sullen.  You can let your imagination run riot.

Big Mouth Little Fish

There was a tank full of sardines at the aquarium that caught my attention.  This was something that was really hard to photograph but I tried anyway.  The sardines were swimming quickly in shoals and they looked much as you would expect them to – a sleek, silvery fish zipping through the water.  The thing that caught my eye was they way that they opened their mouths to feed.  The shape of the head is narrow and clean but, when they open their mouths, flaps of skin unfold to create a huge opening allowing them to scoop up food from a far wider area.  A few of the shoal would do this at any one time so you never knew where to look but they would open wide for a second or two and then close up again.  It totally transformed their appearance.

Deer That Don’t Care

Fort Casey had a bunch of deer that were chomping their way around the grounds while I was there.  These deer seemed pretty fearless.  I guess there are tons of people coming through the Fort, most of whom will not be any trouble to the deer so they must get pretty used to people in close proximity and know that they are not in any threat.  Consequently, I found that my efforts at getting a photo were pretty straightforward.  If I tried to get too close, I figured that they would move off but I could be close enough without affecting them.

The one creature that did seem to spook one of the deer was a cat.  Sitting up against a wall was a ginger cat that was sunning itself.  It didn’t seem to be interested in doing anything at all but the deer was aware of it and seemed to be quite nervous.  A number of times it would jump, presumably because the cat had twitched in some way.  It seemed pretty clear that it was not moving for anyone though.  I guess the deer is going to have to get used to it.

Puffins

In the UK, the puffin is a well recognized bird.  The small body and large bill are easily identified and the coloring is pretty bright.  I am struggling to think whether I have ever seen one in the wild as they live in some pretty remote places.  I might have but I don’t recall it.  The aquarium in Newport OR had a bunch of them though.  While the coloring was a lot more subdued, there was no doubt that they were puffins given their shape.

Whether birds really have personality or not, you can imagine it with puffins.  They seem to be very fussy in the way they move which is probably just a function of being quite a small bird.  As they paddled around the pool and flapped their wings, we got a good look at their mannerisms.  The enclosure was pretty compact so you were very close to them which allowed some good opportunities to get some shots.  Seeing them out in the wild would be cooler but I don’t tend to hang around on cliff faces too often.

Swans on the Lake

When I was still at college (and because I am an old git, I was shooting on film), I spent some summers in Huntingdon, a town in Cambridgeshire that my mum lived in at the time.  The river Ouse ran through the town (actually separate Huntingdon from Godmanchester) and there was a park along the river that I walked in frequently.  One afternoon I was walking there when a swan took off on the water alongside me and I grabbed a single shot of it that was one I was really happy with.  (After I write this, I will go back through my stuff to see if I have a good scan of it to add to the bottom of this post.)

Ever since I have been shooting digitally, I have wanted to get shots of swans flying.  However, I haven’t lived in places where swans were very common.  That has changed since moving here.  There are some wetlands north of here that are heavily populated by swans and I shall be checking them out before too long.  However, we do get some swans in Juanita Bay.  Nancy and I were out for a walk a while back when three pairs of swans took off from the water near us and flew right by.  You can probably guess that I wasn’t carrying a camera that day.

A week or so later, I was back at Juanita Bay with the camera this time and there were swans hanging out in the same area.  I thought that, this time, my planning would pay dividends.  Sadly, that was not to be.  They seemed very content where they were and all I got was pictures of them sleeping, swimming or occasionally stretching their wings.  I shall be back for another attempt though.

My Friends the Eels

Nancy thinks I am nuts (probably for many reasons) but one of them is because I find eels fascinating.  Most aquariums seem to have some eels on display and I love to look at them.  Very often they are pretty reticent about coming out, preferring to stay in their crevices keeping an eye out for something tasty.  However, at the aquarium in Newport, the eels were a lot more active.

They were either swimming about (including clattering in to each other) or they were in a hole but coming out of it regularly to see what was going on.  I have never seen them so active.  Needless to say, I got a bunch of pictures as well as trying some video of them.  Not often that they are so mobile.