I loved Boo’s angelic look as he watched birds outside our picture window, with stained glass windows hanging behind him. I believe the windows may be homemade, they were there when we bought the house, I like the flair they add to the room.
Author: boolie
Beat the Heat (and Smoke)
An unusually hot and dry summer in the Pacific Northwest has led to many troublesome wildfires, and the winds shifted this weekend bringing smoke from fires far to the east into Portland. We kept the windows closed to minimize the smoke coming into the house, and spent the entire weekend in our bedroom with the portable air conditioner keeping things nice and cool.
I took a quick picture of Ellie in her dog bed and Boo behind her in the cat bed, Sam was with my wife on the bed and Trixie I think was playing elsewhere in the house. We keep the bedroom door mostly closed to keep the cool air in, but open enough that the cats can come and go as they please. When Ellie walks in she swings the door wide open with a dramatic swoop of her head. It makes me laugh every time, our sweet-natured goofball making such a grand entrance.
A Surprise in the Salvia
I normally like to photograph the insects and flowers in our garden the same way I shoot animals and plants when I’m hiking, which is to photograph them how I find them. In this case though the water drops on this katydid came not from rain but from me. It’s been a brutal summer here in Portland so even though our plants our drought tolerant to deal with the normally dry Northwest summers, I’ve been giving them an occasional drink of water since they missed out on the rains that usually last through June.
While watering the wildflower garden I saw something jump from the plant I was watering into our bee balm. I dropped the hose and ran over to see what it was, expecting a moth, and was delighted to instead find my favorite insect to photograph, a katydid. I had the chance to photograph them from 2006 to 2009 but hadn’t seen one since, so I put aside the watering and ran inside to grab my camera and tripod and macro lens and try for some pictures, even though the breeze was going to make things difficult.
I was a bit crushed when I got back to the bee balm and discovered the katydid was gone. But it hadn’t gone far, as I saw it moving on the nearby salvia and settled in for some pictures. In the top picture it is about to jump from one branch to another, its two front legs in open space balancing in the wind while the back four maintain purchase on the salvia. In the bottom two pictures it is using its mandibles to cut off pieces of the flower to eat. It was hard to get any pictures as the breeze was blowing the flowers around, I did my best to manually focus whenever the katydid came back into view and hoped for the best.
I planted the salvia for the hummingbirds, and the bees and butterflies like them too, so I was delighted to see the katydid enjoy them too. The katydid’s enjoyment is more destructive than the others, but no worries, there are plenty of blossoms to choose from. I hope it can forgive the disturbance of my watering, as the same water that upset it nurtures the flowers it loves to eat.
Dinner Time, Decision Time
A hoary marmot eats the leaves of wildflowers late in the day in Mount Rainier National Park, taken soon after I arrived on my trip to the park last fall. I’ll be deciding within the next couple of weeks on my trip for this fall, the two major candidates are returning to Mount Rainier and/or Olympic National Park, or heading out to Yellowstone and possibly the Tetons. Also might look into Glacier National Park or taking several small trips so I could also hit the Oregon coast and the redwoods in California.
Usually it comes down to lodging availability, road construction, weather, how long it’s been since my last trip, and how much driving I feel up to. Sometimes I feel a particular pull to see certain types of wildlife, and at the moment the marmots and pikas of Mount Rainier are calling me back, even though I was there just last year. I didn’t see them as much as I would have liked, and it poured rain during much of the trip. Except it didn’t rain when I was in the Hoh Rain Forest like I wanted, so maybe the fifth visit will be the charm.
On the other hand, I haven’t been to Yellowstone in four years. The last trip wasn’t as much fun as other years, although a couple of days were two of my favorites of any trip, and even a lesser visit to the area is still a pretty great time.
The other little wrinkle this year is my cameras. My Canon 7D II and 100-400 II lens were both released too late last year for any major hiking trips, so it would be fun to try them out in the wildlife-heavy parks. I did cancel my pre-order for the new Sony A7R II, I would have been a part of the initial shipment but it was just too much expense to risk without waiting for more thorough reviews. If I had kept the order I’d lean towards Yellowstone, as the Sony can shoot lovely 4K video and I’ve long wanted to video the geothermal features there. It’s high-resolution full-frame sensor would also be fantastic for still shots, so I probably would have spent the entire week in Yellowstone and split my time between the scenery and the wildlife.
Strangely enough it’s the scenery of Yellowstone that is attracting me more this year than the wildlife, I should probably check myself for a fever.
I wouldn’t complain about a week of hiking in the Tetons either except I’m out of good hiking shape and all that elevation change while carrying the cameras might do me in. I love photographing the mountains at sunrise but I’ll want a better camera before making that a priority, the full-frame cameras are much better suited to that than the 7D.
The good news is these are all fun places to visit so there are no bad choices. It’s the planning I hate.
Good, Better, Best
I must have watched this video a thousand times in the weeks after Emma died when I desperately needed to laugh, and many more times since, but even so I still can’t watch it without laughing. It’s a short video showing three dogs (in Finland I think) that are competing in a timed trial down an obstacle course where they have to run past food and toys and meet their owners at the end. Ellie and I like how the video starts with a dog that does well, then shows a dog that does even better, and finishes with a dog that is clearly the winner.
Gamera vs. Emma
Emma was sitting on my love seat and I put her favorite toy beside her so I’d have a portrait of the two of them. She loved this turtle and would sometimes carry it with her around the house. Sometimes she’d run with it, murmuring as she went, I suppose pretending she was on a great hunt.
Or maybe she was just a big Gamera fan.
I didn’t sleep well for months after she died, having recurring bad dreams. Not nightmares in the traditional sense, but the one that occurred most often was me visiting my favorite refuge in my car and I’d end up accidentally driving into the water. The car would slowly fill with water as I drove it around trying to find a place to get back onto solid ground, but I wasn’t worried about drowning, and my steering wheel could somehow direct the car even when floating, but I was worried about ruining both the car and the refuge yet didn’t know what to do. Being in an unfamiliar and deteriorating situation was the common refrain to all the dreams.
It’s not too surprising that I was haunted by such dreams, given that she slowly slipped through our fingers even though no tests identified why she was sick, and she died even though we tried everything we could. The nightmares slowly faded as I came to grips with her death.
I haven’t been out hiking since she died apart from a quick trip to Ridgefield right afterwards, initially from a mix of not feeling up to it emotionally or physically. But as I began to get more sleep, and as time healed wounds, the desire to get back out on the trails slowly returned. Unfortunately some chronic stomach problems also returned, and I even stayed home from work today, but hopefully with the return of cooler weather things will return to normal (it’s been a blistering summer here in Portland and heat is one of the things that can trigger it).
I’ll start planning my fall hiking trip this weekend, so the Tom Bihn travel bag I ordered in December will finally get to come out of its box and be put to good use.
Two Tundras
A peregrine falcon perches above Canvasback Lake as tundra swans fly past in the background. The swans winter at Ridgefield in large numbers and are impossible to miss, but seeing a peregrine, while not rare, is much less common. I think this is the tundra race of peregrine.
When Two Frogs Love Each Other Very Much …
These mating bullfrogs were serenely floating in the water while around them was chaos, with males playing leapfrog and wrestling each other into submission and croaking loudly. The male here is the one on top with his characteristic yellow throat and large tympani (the eardrums, the big circles behind the eyes). The water was mostly still but there was a subtle current and they both used their webbed rear feet to control their speed and balance. They don’t have webbing on their front toes, so the female used her front legs to maintain balance while the male has his wrapped around her body.
Hoverfly
A hoverfly dries out atop a black-eyed susan after a sudden downpour.
Ring-necked Thieves
Sometimes animal behavior seems all too familiar to our own.
A small flock of ring-necked ducks was diving under the shallow waters of Bull Lake to feed, sometimes bringing up what I’m guessing is the root of an aquatic plant. Whatever it was, the ducks were very fond of it, and the one that surfaced with it would swim away from the others while trying to quickly eat it, all while any nearby ducks would try to swim over and steal it and eat it for themselves. I wasn’t sure which of these two males actually surfaced with the plant but the chase was on.
While in a mad dash to escape with his food, the ring-neck swam directly over a lesser scaup as she was surfacing, leaving her rather startled but none the worse for wear. He held onto his prize and was able to eat it at last.
Boolie 