Observations of the passing seasons |
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rob@whiterabbits.com
2004
- April - February 2003
- October - August - July - May - April - March - February - January - Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge visit, March 2001 
- Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula - Creeping with Utah Nature Study Society - Tidepool - Association for the Study of Literature and Environment RSS feed 
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 Raindrops bead up on the leaves of a lupine in this shot taken at the end of March along the Oregon Coast. They're back! Tonight Natalie and I made a short visit to the longest running Purple Martin nesting site in Washington at Titlow Beach Park in Tacoma, and almost as soon as we stepped out of the car we heard the familiar chirp of a Purple Martin flying high overhead. As we walked toward the picnic tables and the site where the martin boxes hang from piling just offshore at the end of the road we heard the martin call a couple more times, and after I set up the spotting scope and looked to the sky it was easy to find the single martin soaring above against a backdrop of blue skies accented with cirrus clouds. The martin was gliding with a group of gulls, making a few flapping wing beats and then circling and chirping, but never descending to give us a close up view of the brilliant black and purple hues along its back that gives the species its common name. I have been visiting Titlow Beach each day this week, with the exception of yesterday, in an effort to document when the first martins would arrive on their long journey north from South America. Last year we made our first Purple Martin sighting at Titlow Beach on April 21, and so, like many other species sightings this year, the martins are back nearly two weeks ahead of last year, making one of their earliest appearances ever. Now I can start watching to the first martin sighting of the year at Dickman Mill Park down on the waterfront below our house, where eight martins nested after new nesting boxes were installed there last summer.  Orchirds blooming in the plant-filled southwest corner of our living room...
Did someone just kick the seasons into gear and send the Pacific Northwest sailing through spring and straight to summer? That is what it feels like so far this month as the typical April showers have been abandoned my Mother Nature for foggy mornings and warm, sunny afternoons. There are some years when we don't see weather this nice in June, let alone in April. Not that I am complaining. It is just another signal, along with the migrating birds that are showing up one to two weeks early across the state, that late spring and summer are on the way. This has already been an odd transition from winter to spring, since Natalie and I were buried in work editing Birding Washington through March, and it feels like we just shipped the manuscript back to our publishers and removed the blinders that kept us focused on finishing the editing project in time to see that the frosty mornings are long gone and days with temperatures rising into the 70s are here. That means it is serious catch up time in the yard and garden, and it means that we need to get ourselves back out into the wild places around our state to view the birds that are moving through on the way to their breeding grounds and to revisit some of our favorite places where we like to mark the passing of the seasons. Among the places on the agenda: A trip this weekend to Crab Creek and the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Washington, the first of what will need to be a series of trips to the Grays Harbor area to check on migrating shorebirds in the coming weeks, and a return trip to Oak Creek Canyon on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains to check on the area where fire swept down the canyon floor in 2002 and where we visited and did some bird and plant photography and research last May. I guess I had better start writing and adding my photographs to this site more regularly as we return to exploring nature after a year buried in book writing and editing. Finally! |
