A pair of butterflies (possibly Papilio rutulus) fluttered along beside me as I neared the Tursi Trail head along Donnell Road on Fidalgo Island a few weeks ago. As I began my hike along the dusty trail, a garter snake slithered off to safety. Thimble berries and trailing blackberries lined the primitive path during the first …
Category Archives: Island Life
On Golden Frog
Like the sirens to Odysseus, the frog chorus beckons me. From dusk to dawn I hear the call, pause, perk up my ears, wander towards the pond. Within a tiny plot of land, less than a tenth of an acre, an amphibian-friendly habitat exists where adults reproduce, eggs hatch, turn into tadpoles, finally form frogs. …
Rookery Dookery Dock
In a small patch of March’s Point in Anacortes is a big secret: a heron rookery, also known as a heronry. Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve claims, “The heron colony on March’s Point is believed to be the largest nesting area for Great Blue Herons in all of Western North America. Herons have nested at …
Eaglemania
Bald eagles are found only in North America. In Washington state, “The early summer bald eagle population when white settlers first arrived in Washington may have been around 8,800…Persecution, the cutting of forests, commercial exploitation of salmon runs, and finally the use of DDT reduced the state’s population to only 104 known breeding pairs by 1980…The population …
Washington State Ferries
I began this post as a way to share a few ferry photos, but controversy concerning the Washington State Ferries (WSF) sent me in a different direction. I feel fortunate to live in an area that allows me the opportunity to choose to travel occasionally by sea rather than land, typically along the Mukilteo-Clinton route, …
Padilla Bay Estuarine Research Reserve
Migrant Trumpeter swans from the north dotted farmlands along the road to my destination a few weeks ago: Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Skagit County. Paraphrasing from the PBNERR site: Padilla Bay is an eight mile long by three miles wide estuary at the saltwater edge of the large delta of the Skagit River in the …
“All That the Rain Promises and More”
A barred owl’s call lured me into the woods yesterday evening near Heart Lake in the Anacortes Forest Lands. “Who cooks for you. Who cooks for you all,” provides the correct pattern of this species of owl’s call, but it doesn’t do justice to the super soft, spectacular sound. I grabbed my camera and headed out …
North Beach, West Beach and Cranberry Lake at DPSP
There are several locations within Deception Pass State Park that a person could spend an entire day: Bowman Bay, Cornet Bay, and Rosario Beach (plus the satellite sites: Kikutali Preserve, Dugualla State Park and Ben Ure Island), but most folks wanting to check out the “4,134-acre marine and camping park with 77,000-feet of saltwater shoreline, and …
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Libbey Beach County Park
A predicted minus 2.6 foot low tide, as low as local tides go, drew me to a different beach this summer in early July. It was Libbey Beach County Park, located just north of Fort Ebey State Park, accessed by following Libbey Road to the west for about 1.5 miles from Highway 20. I had …
Double Bluff County Park
This weekend I finally had the chance to revisit one of the most vast, flat, sandy, scenic beaches on Whidbey Island: Double Bluff County Park. According to the Washington Department of Fishing and Wildlife site, “While the tidelands are a State Park, Double Bluff Park (the upland portion of the park) is operated by the Friends …
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