fog – Boolie

Faith

I love that we can see mountains from our backyard. Most days anyway, on this rainy day in December I had to take it mostly on faith they were still there.

A northern harrier stretches its wings on a foggy winter morning in 2009. I had seen it an hour earlier in this same spot but I don’t know if it spent the hour there or only returned to a favored perch. I’m happy I got some pictures of the stump I called “The Cactus Tree” as in subsequent days it fell over into the swamp.

Fog Hunt

The coyotes were active on this winter day in 2006, using the heavy fog as cover to hunt a variety of prey. This one made a half-hearted, almost playful, attempt at a great blue heron I had been photographing, later I saw one running across the meadow with a goose in its mouth.

Frost & Fog

A great blue heron takes a break from hunting voles in a meadow on a cold and foggy December morning in 2006.

Whiteout

A juvenile red-tailed hawk sits in a meadow in heavy fog at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Washington. The telephoto lens is exaggerating the whiteout effect as it is picking up all the fog between my car and the distant hawk but it illustrates the point: for an animal that might normally hunt by soaring high above the meadow and looking for voles below, a thick fog changes the dynamic between predator and prey.

The fog didn’t have such an impact on an American bittern stalking the shoreline that winter morning as it looked and listened for small creatures both on the land and in the water. Sometimes it hunted by slowly walking up and down the shoreline, sometimes by standing still, but in either case the thick fog would not obscure the prey such a short distance away.

Eastern Fox Squirrel

An eastern fox squirrel sits on a park bench in Irving Park on a foggy December day. We have two species of tree squirrel you frequently see in the city, foxes and eastern grays, neither is native. We have native squirrels in our forests but I’ve rarely seen them.

Closed for Season

Water Finds a Way

There is a playground near one of the entrances to Irving Park, a while back they added these water features so kids could cool off during the summer. The city shuts the water off in the cooler weather when nature brings her own water, normally as rain, but sometimes snow or fog. These pictures are from a few days apart, at the top of the hill is my beloved dog park where in both pictures you can see people playing with their dogs.

Fog at the Door of Hope

Fog shrouds the Door of Hope church in NE Portland.

Tag: fog