boolie

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.

Open Water

Coots often hang out in large groups and when it gets cold enough to freeze the ponds at Ridgefield, such as this cold New Year’s Eve morning, the constant movement of the flock helps keep part of the pond from freezing. This not only benefits them, as they dive under the water both to feed and to avoid hunting eagles, but other waterfowl as well, such as the bufflehead who would join them the following morning.

Pompadour

A preening heron is momentarily left with a pompadour on a cold New Year’s Day. I thought it a good look but it must not have agreed, for it pulled the feathers back tight against its head and resumed its grooming.

The Deadly Aster

After seeing a crab spider on our aster near our front steps, I started looking for her every time I went up or down. I noticed she was frequently on one of the blossoms but by the weekend when I had the time to photograph her again, she was on a flower that was not going to be easy for me to reach. But then I noticed this assassin bug nymph on a nearby blossom and photographed it instead. What a deadly place our beautiful little aster can be! The assassin bug kills other insects by attacking them with its proboscis (you can see it hanging below the face of the nymph) and injecting either venom or digestive juices, and then sucking out the fluids of their prey.