Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
When we lived near Salem, Baskett Slough was my home refuge and the place I visited the most. In fact it may have been the first place I visited after we moved to Oregon but my memory is a little fuzzy on that point. However I’ve rarely been back since we moved to Portland as it’s now quite a drive, and my allegiance has shifted across the Columbia to Ridgefield.
An ent is born on a foggy night with naught but the will-o’-wisps watching.
… there’s a UFO above my head, isn’t there.
No snow for us this winter, this is from last year.
A picture from the fall of 2011 of Ellie in Irving Park, there was a lot less gray in her face back then. The big red strip attached to her collar lit up, one of several approaches we’ve tried over the years to make her more visible at night on our walks. The dog park is at the top of the hill in the background, normally she would be on leash at this point but I took it off for the picture.
Sadly I haven’t found a good time to photograph her in the fall color in the years since.
I photographed this mountain stream on the trail above Wahkeena Falls in the fall and realized when I got home that I had photographed these same rocks a few years earlier. I love the look and sound and smell of mountain streams and the Columbia River Gorge never disappoints. While I find the picture calming, the trail is popular and I had to keep moving the camera when people approached to avoid blocking the trail with my tripod.
I took a much needed day off from work to go hiking in the Columbia River Gorge. I got a bit of a late start and intended to hike from Wahkeena Falls to Angel’s Rest but I was having so much fun taking pictures on the way up that by the time I got to Fairy Falls I decided to take a few self-portraits with my new backpack and head back down. The tricky part was standing still for nearly a second, especially since I couldn’t hear when the shutter clicked due to the waterfall so I had to guess at when it was OK to move.
The Columbia River Gorge has a variety of spectacular waterfalls but little Fairy Falls is one of my favorites, I find it so relaxing that every time I see it I think how nice it would be to have even a small version of it in my backyard.
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.
My favorite creature in the Pacific Northwest is the rough-skinned newt. I used to see them frequently at the places I hiked when we lived further south in Oregon, this one is from 2002 at William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis.
A dark-eyed junco visits the dogwood next to the bird feeders in our backyard. She is a female of the Oregon race.
An eastern gray squirrel eats an acorn in our backyard. The eastern grays are not native to Oregon but are common in city neighborhoods.
Boolie 