Voyage of the Guillemot

On Sunday I had the great privilege of taking a trip on Guillemot, a fine old wooden motorboat owned by Peter Mann and his wife, Nancy Everds. Nancy takes truly amazing wildlife pictures, and she also photographed the trip. If she posts any, I'll link to them and we can all gaze in awe.
Anyway, here are some pictures that I took:

Here's the wake of the Guillemot on the glassy early-morning water of the Ship Canal.


Double-crested cormorant drying its wings. (And doing the bat-signal.)



Mr. and Mrs. Common Merganser, perhaps charmed by the cuteness of the vessel, consent to be photographed.



Surf scoters out in Puget Sound.


There was a big flock of western-grebes. We could hear their trilling calls above the hum of the engine.




A pair of bald eagles looks on from Blakely Rock, off Bainbridge Island.



Two pelagic cormorants and three sea lions share a buoy.



Brant on Blake Island.



Brant with Mount Rainier in the background.



A yellow-faced bumblebee, I believe. Spring continues.



If you moor at Blake Island, make sure your boat is secure.



There are curious characters about.



Another pelagic cormorant.


Harlequin ducks, off West Seattle.

Beach scenes, Discovery Park

Discovery Park on Wednesday. Sea frothy and gray with floodwater, Rainier visible.


A bald eagle soaring by.


And river otter tracks on the North Beach. Check out the scuff marks where the tail went by.

More webcams

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has a webcam aimed at a burrowing owl nest near Pasco. The best time to check is when the owls are most active: dawn, dusk and night time. If you look around the WildWatch program site, you can snoop on a variety of Washington fauna. Live at the moment: big brown bats, western bluebirds, ospreys, eagles, barn owls, salmon, harbor seals and great blue herons.

Montlake fill

Urban wildlife is a contradiction in terms. How wild are creatures that exist in a human created environment? The answer is, that though their surroundings may be human made, the animals and plants are very wild indeed.
The Montlake Fill -- a reclaimed garbage dump that has become a showpiece for the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture -- is a study in those kinds of contrasts. Its ponds and paths are tended by some of the best minds in the state, but it is still an urban place, full of wanderers and runners, with a flock of starlings chattering in one of the cottonwoods.
And yet it is wild. That's why people come. Cottonwood seeds waft through the air, sparrows call from every shrub, and warblers lurk between the leaves (I spotted a common yellowthroat).

(I don't know what the flowers are, but I like the picture.)
Shoveler's Pond had northern shovelers on it, and the male was in the mood for courting, bobbing his head constantly.

Swallows (barn and tree) were out in force, and a Great Blue Heron fished offshore.

But the most entertaining birds were the red-winged blackbirds: males singing belligerently from cattails, males and females driving off crows, males joining forces with crows to drive off a bald eagle. The drama was all there.
Mount Rainier looked nice too.

One grim note: a dead beaver by the lake shore.

Bald Eagles in West Seattle

The West Seattle Blog has a story about the neighborhood's bald eagle population, illustrated with fine photos and a video.

Portland red-tailed hawk's eggs hatching

The red-tailed hawks nesting in downtown Portland have had their first two chicks. You can check on them on this webcam.
Meanwhile, the bald eagles nesting in Sidney B.C. have three chicks, and the peregrine falcons on the Washington Mutual Tower have four eggs. The webcam watching the falcons is here.

Eagle web cams

A pair of eagles near the Swartz Bay Terminal in Sidney B.C. are expecting. The female has laid two eggs, which should hatch in early April. In the meantime, you can watch the female, and sometimes the male, sit on the eggs, and adjusting the nesting material, thanks to the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, a non-profit with offices in Surrey, B.C. and Blaine, Wash.
The foundation also has a camera trained on a pair of eagles readying their nest on Hornby Island B.C. At the site, you can also view past footage of nesting Great Blue Herons and spawning salmon.