Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
I recently got back from a week of hiking in Washington and made my fourth visit to the Hoh Rain Forest. My fourth dry visit to the Hoh Rain Forest. While it rained heavily during much of my trip, it was warm and sunny during my visit to the Hoh, so I’ll make a return trip this winter to all but guarantee a rainy day.
I wonder if tourists would pay me on sunny days to walk behind them with a watering can held above their head, to better get the full rainforest experience.
Boo inspects my new backpack. Fortunately Emma, who had snuck into the main compartment, fled before Boo sat on it.
If you’ve mastered the art of solo dog bed stealing, why not double your fun? In this class Professor Boo will teach you how to snuggle, spoon, and stick your feet in your best friend’s face!
The squirrels in my Portland neighborhood are all invaders from the east, either gray or fox squirrels. This eastern fox squirrel was nearly obscured by leaves in a nature park in nearby Beaverton, where the large habitat also supports one of our native squirrels, the Douglas’ squirrel.
Quite a different kestrel picture compared to the previous one I posted, this distant portrait shows a kestrel at work, hovering in place watching for small rodents moving about in the meadow below.
I started this blog in January of 2006, self-hosting it at my old site, but when I closed that site late last year I moved the blog’s hosting to WordPress. However since my pictures went away when I shut down my site, most of the posts now had missing images. Rather than have a blog full of missing links and images, and rather than delete them, I set those posts to be private.
I’ve been testing out hosting images at Flickr over the past year, so when I upload a picture related to an old blog post, I update the post and set it to public. I’m not sure how WordPress deals with this for those who have subscribed to the blog, but I suspect it sends out notices just as if it was a new post, even though it was written years ago. The original date is shown correctly so if I’m talking about Templeton and Scout as though they were still alive, check the date of the post.
Currently there are 225 public posts but still 1133 private posts waiting for their associated pictures to be uploaded so they can be set to public. If you’re not subscribed and just visiting the blog but want to see any pictures I upload, your best bet is to visit my account at Flickr.
Kestrels are our smallest falcon but late in December of 2010 I was thrilled to see them up close at several locations around the auto tour at Ridgefield. This male was hunting for earthworms beside Canvasback Lake on a rainy Christmas Eve.
A gadwall drake walks across the ice late on a winter afternoon.
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when I first spotted a dark form walking along the opposite shore on a cold winter morning. It took me a moment to recognize it as a double-crested cormorant as while it’s a bird I’ve seen many times, it’s always been flying or swimming, not walking. I wonder if it was as confused as I was, as we had a rare day cold enough to freeze the water of the slough, icing over its favorite fishing hole.
Ellie takes full advantage of her surprisingly cat-free dog bed.
Boolie 