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Home But Not Home
I took this picture of Trixie hiding under the bed on her first day with us in January of 2015, she was home but it did not yet feel like home to her. It had been quite a month for her, she was rescued on New Year’s Day on the other side of the state and brought to the Oregon Humane Society here in Portland two weeks later. They kept her for two more weeks until she was spayed and we brought her home on the 27th. It wouldn’t take her long to realize she was home though, soon she was out from under the bed and snuggling with me on top of it. She’s never looked back.
I used my little mirrorless camera for these first shots to avoid stressing her any further, it’s far quieter and less obtrusive than my larger camera.
The Lined Lair
I was surprised to find how relaxing both of my short hiking trips were earlier this year as it normally takes me a bit longer to decompress from work before I can begin truly enjoying my time off. Perhaps it was partly because my most stressful project had finished. Partly because both destinations were within six hours of the house and thus didn’t require a lot of driving. But I also had a lot of fun each day, each with its unique charms, such as going out to the beach at Lagoon Creek in Redwood National Park and finding a lair of lined shore crabs.
While lair may not be accurate, this one does look like it’s guarding its lair with emptied barnacle shells and shadows behind it. There were a handful of crabs in this one little still-damp spot in the tide pools, the water not far off, and watching them and some nearby oystercatchers made for a delightful time on my spur-of-the-moment hike on the Yurok Loop Trail, my first visit to this section of the park.
Ellie’s Top Tips to Beat the Heat
Dog days of summer got you down? Beat the heat with these top tips from a dog who knows!
- Stay all day in an air-conditioned room
That’s it! Enjoy your summer!
The Forked Tail
I’m not a big fan of roses even though we have a bunch in our back and side yards. I often think of digging them up and replacing them with something both more to my liking and a better fit for our climate, and may do it yet, but I do like that they sometimes host an insect I love to photograph, the fork-tailed bush katydid. I found this male nymph on a rose bush along with several other katydids, two that were younger and one adult. This one was pretty large but still had short little wings. I’ve photographed them multiple times over the years but only now noticed that they don’t stand on the tips of their feet, but on pads further up.
I took a picture from behind as well as it shows the fork that gives them their name (both the top and bottom are forked but the name refers to the top). There are other katydids with forks but this is the only one in Oregon.
An Explosion of Green
I was hiking the Hoh River Trail in the rain when I walked past an open area and was struck by this explosion of green, a young moss-draped tree arching in all directions. There were so many different shapes and sizes and textures of green, clover and maples and moss and ferns and the large trees beyond, all different ways life has adapted to live in this damp and verdant forest. If I could hike in only one type of terrain, it would be the forest, nothing restores my spirit like a walk in the woods.
The Yawning Gull
On my previous visit to the redwoods I was only planning on visiting the forests but was surprised to learn that part of the parks include beaches. This time I deliberately spent time in the tide pools, mostly at Enderts Beach in Crescent City but also a little bit further south near False Klamath Cove. This yawning gull atop a bed of goose barnacles was at Enderts Beach as the tide was rolling in, taken on my last morning while hiking back to the car, ready to start my trip back to Oregon (after one last brief hike in the redwoods on the way). I planned the trip to coincide with days with nice low tides after sunrise.
Much like a short trip to the Olympics in March, this short trip to the redwoods in June re-charged my batteries more than I was expecting. Partly from the time spent in these tremendous forests and partly from the variety of hikes in the parks, as both include beaches with tide pools. It’s hard to take in how many different types of life you can observe all within a few miles.
High Heat Hangout
Sam and Trixie (offscreen) hang out in the guest room at the end of a heat wave. Across the hall is the air-conditioned bedroom where they can go when they need to cool down, and where I spent the entirety of the hot weather.
The Missing Claw
One of the reasons I visited tide pools on my trips to Olympic National Park and Redwood National and State Parks was to get more familiar with the animals that live there, so I’d be better prepared to photograph them on future visits. On my visit to the beach along the Yurok Loop Trail (starts at the Lagoon Creek picnic and rest area off the highway in Redwood National Park) I was delighted to find a handful of crabs but didn’t know anything about them or even if they were all the same species. I looked them up when I got home and learned they were lined shore crabs, a new species for me.
I was so excited as I photographed them that I didn’t even notice until I got home that this one is missing one of its large front claws. Ever observant, that’s me. I was surprised to learn that although it does sometimes eat small animals, the lined shore crab feeds primarily on algae it scrapes off rocks as I had I assumed the fearsome looking claws were primarily used for combat.
The American Chameleon (But Not Really)
Though not a true chameleon, the green anole is sometimes referred to as the American Chameleon because it can change its color, from brown as shown here to a brilliant green.
Boolie 