Purple martins, Buckley Bay

Open the door after you get in line for the Denman Island ferry and you can hear the happy, gurgling call of purple martins. Several families were raising young in boxes placed on pilings next to the ferry line up.

We could see two heads out of every opening. Every so often a male or a female would fly in, perch at the top of the piling and look around, then swoop over to bring them a food item, sometimes leaving with a white fecal sac. I watched one mother bring a dragonfly to the box, and then another. The father showed up a few minutes later, also carrying a dragonfly. He offered it to the young, but they must have been full. So it was a meal for Dad.

Golden Buprestid, Mount Maxwell

Why is it called a golden buprestid? Looks green to me. Anyway, my husband and his t-shirt need fear nothing from this glorious critter. Douglas Fir, shore pine and various wooden structures, not so much.

Pacific spiketail, Saltspring Island

Handsome fella, Green Lake

Red-winged blackbird making noise from a cottonwood tree.

And keeping tabs on who makes noise back.

Ohanapecosh, Mount Rainier National Park

We went camping at Ohanapecosh Campground at Mount Rainier National Park last weekend, far far away in that era when we were complaining about how summer was taking its time arriving. It didn't rain much, and we had a lovely, if heavily clothed time.
Ohanapecosh is the site of a long-ago spa town on some hot springs. The town has long since vanished, and the National Park Service has restored the area around, so we can view the wonders of thermophilic cyanobacteria.

And miraculous dripping brains...

Also seen: western coralroot.

Bunchberry

Devil's matchstick, which is a cool name, as is...

red-naped sapsucker.

Prettiest slime mold yet, Discovery Park

Fred Rhoades tells me that these are the newly emerged fruiting bodies of Ceriatomyxa fruticulosa, or coral slime. Eventually these tendrils will become opaque and then become stippled with tiny spores on stalks.

Damselflies, preparing for lift-off, Discovery Park

It may not feel like summer just yet, but over in the North Beach pond, every log and piece of wood was lined with skinny insect bodies sporting electric blue highlights. Swift forktail damselflies.

Lots of them.

Last year, I photographed an earlier generation on June 1.