Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
The picture above of a coyote hunting in the marsh is deliberately like this bittern picture, both taken at Rest Lake. The lake is the largest on Ridgefield’s auto tour and has water in it year round, but the marshy areas that ring the lake are my favorite places to watch. To survive in these areas is to avoid being eaten not just by coyotes and bitterns but herons and hawks and harriers and eagles and otters and mink and weasels and raccoons and snakes and bullfrogs and …
As you know by now, one of my favorite things to do at Ridgefield is to photograph bitterns. After having such great success last winter and spring, this year I’ve seen them mostly in glimpses and rarely had a chance to photograph them. I was tickled to have the chance to photograph this one in January, showing how well it’s coloring matches that of the dried grasses in which it loves to hunt.
I took the picture below last winter with my iPhone, just wanted a quick shot of my favorite place to look for bitterns, I took it with the phone since the view is similar to what I see with my eyes as I drive along. It’s a bit hard to see but there’s a bittern almost dead center in the picture, on the opposite side of the channel a few feet up from the water line.
Suffice it to say they’re hard to see but I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Once I get to my favorite bittern areas, I wait until there’s no traffic behind me and then let the car creep along as slow as possible as I scan the grasses for these elusive birds. I normally take our Subaru to the refuge but this spring I’ve been taking our Civic, mostly to see if I could tolerate driving a stick shift at the refuge.
The biggest problem I encountered is exactly this scenario. At these speeds, the car is right at the stall speed and it requires a lot of pedal work to keep the car front stalling out. It’s doable, but annoying, and probably not so great for the clutch. So my preference for the next car will be an automatic, although if the stick is a particularly good one, the irritation at Ridgefield might be balanced out by fun on the commute.
And honestly, I’m done talking about cars, starting now!
By the by, the body of water on the other side of the the berm is Rest Lake, and those white dots are tundra swans that winter at the refuge in the hundreds. The bittern above was also at Rest Lake, but at a different spot than this one.
I knew it was going to be a good year for coyotes.
During a two week stretch in mid-to-late January, I saw a coyote pair frequently and took some of my best coyote pictures ever. But not long after I jammed up my ankle and took a two month sabbatical from Ridgefield. Even after the ankle healed, I’ve only been back to Ridgefield three times this spring with not a coyote picture to show for it. While it’s been an extremely wet spring here in the Northwest, many of the weekends have been sunny. The refuge gates are locked until well after sunrise and before sunset at this time of year, so the best light on sunny days is lost. And sunny days bring out the crowds, so I prefer to stay home and get in some extra hedgehogging.
I did see a young coyote on my visit a week ago. It was so close that getting a picture was going to be difficult from my angle without risking spooking it, so I just pulled over and watched as it hunted beside the road. But I saw a Subaru coming up quickly down the road, a car I recognized since we have one just like it. I knew they had seen the young coyote, and I also knew what was going to happen next. The coyote watched them approach and as they got on the brakes on the gravel road, the coyote bolted at the sound.
In the real world they weren’t going fast at all, just Ridgefield fast, and even a tolerant coyote won’t tolerate that.
This adult is one of the pair that I watched with such success in January, it’s coat drenched on a wonderfully wet winter’s day. And I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about cars anymore, but this is why I’ve been on the hunt for a quiet car. When I’ve worked to earn an animal’s trust, the sound of the gas engine firing up feels like a betrayal of that trust.
This young bald eagle was perched on a tree overlooking Canvasback Lake, watching the waterfowl below, when it suddenly took to the skies. Normally I would have liked more empty sky in the upper left corner of the picture but the eagle bolted with no warning, disturbed by the sharp retort of a shotgun blast, so I had no time to properly compose the shot. The birds aren’t normally so perturbed by the blasts, but I do prefer the off-days during duck hunting season, not because I have a problem with hunting per se but because I prefer the quiet.
I’ve hoped to photograph pied-billed grebe chicks each spring, as their fantastic faces look nothing like the birds they will become, but this is the first year I’ve had the chance. The two parents had a handful of chicks and were busy feeding them, catching a variety of underwater creatures and feeding them to the hungry chicks. It seemed to me the adults were killing their prey before handing it off to the youngsters, but even so the chicks often dropped their food into the water as they learned to move items about in their bills. The adult was always nearby if necessary to retrieve the food, but in this case the chick was able to pluck it from the water on its own.
I’m at that age where I should be having a mid-life crisis, so in addition to my practical little hatchbacks I should be looking at a mid-life crisis car. My choice would be the same as any other man’s — a Volvo.
Ahem.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Volvos although I don’t know why. I’ve never owned one, and while we had one while I was a kid, we sold it before I was of driving age. But I’d occasionally see a beautiful little Volvo hatchback as I drove to work, and was vexed enough to want to know more, yet I never could get a good look at its nameplate. I searched Volvo’s website for hatchbacks but nothing came up, and even looked for it at the auto show in January but didn’t see it. Perhaps we just missed it at the end of a long day. But I discovered one in the neighborhood while walking Ellie and finally identified my mysterious beauty — the Volvo C30.
Volvo doesn’t call it a hatchback, even though it has a hatch in the back, but never mind. It’s not only still being made, it’s for sale here in the States and could be mine for the asking. Both inside and out I think the C30 is one of the prettiest cars on the road, at any price, and it’s quick but not at all fuel-efficient. So I think it qualifies as a mid-life crisis car, just with a Boolish twist. Not a sports car, but nevertheless a car for my heart and not my head.
But even that’s not quite true. This along with the Lexus CT would be two of the best cars for my commute, and would be comfortable for those winter and spring days at Ridgefield when I sit in the car for hour after hour, waiting for those lucky moments like this bald eagle at Long Lake. I’ve been taking our Civic to the refuge the past couple of months, mostly to see if I could tolerate a stick shift at the refuge, but I was caught off guard but how much less comfortable I was by the end of the day in the Civic compared to our Subaru. We’ve had both cars for about 12 years so it’s not as if they are new to me, but I guess I just haven’t spent long days in the Civic before.
If the C30 was available in all-wheel drive, I think my head would follow my heart on this one, but sadly it is not. Rumor has it the C30 is being discontinued in any event, so I suppose it’s a moot point.
But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy.
Psalm 5:11
The bullfrogs were singing in rare form at the refuge this weekend. Breeding season was in full swing and the males were croaking and wrestling and leapfrogging each other, and a few lucky ones were mating with the females. They were in a channel beside Bull Lake so I had to shoot down on them between the tall grass. Between a gentle breeze that constantly moved the grass about and my temporary bout of photographic incompetence, it took me a while to settle in and find my way.
This male was one of my favorites. I wanted to catch the ripples made by his croaking but was a bit surprised that my favorite view of the ripples is before his throat fully expands. The problem was that by the time his throat is fully extended, the ripples interfered with each other as they bounced off his rear legs, breaking up the pattern.
Beautiful creature, this one. Beautiful.
A cinnamon teal pair settles in as the light fades at the end of the day. A simple but peaceful picture, one of my favorites from this past winter.
You’d think I’d never held a camera before.
I don’t know why exactly but some days I struggle mightily with exposure, with focus, with stability, with aim, with composition, with equipment, with everything. What works for me is to work through it. To keep taking picture after picture until despite my efforts I get one that I like, then more and more until I get one I love.
This past Sunday was a fun day to be at Ridgefield, full of new animal behaviors I either hadn’t seen or at least not photographed, but I couldn’t take a picture to save my life. One highlight was spotting a juvenile black phoebe, a bird I had only seen one once before while vacationing in New Mexico. This species is normally a resident of areas well to our south so I was excited to see it once more. So excited that I botched the exposure on every picture save the last.
I never saw it again.
A good Ridgefield car isn’t just quiet, it’s small. Thin in width and short in length. Height is a mixed bag, a low height is useful for shooting into the water, taller is better for seeing over grasses and shooting into trees. But narrow and short, yes yes yes, more please.
The auto tour at Ridgefield is a gravel road that starts off both wide and two-way but most of the loop is narrow and one-way. There are pull-outs strategically placed around the loop where you can pull over and sit to your heart’s content, and other places where the road is wide enough that if you pull over, other cars can still get by. But there are a few places I love to shoot that I can’t really stop without blocking the road, at least if I’m in our Subaru, but with a narrow car perhaps some traffic could get by.
One such place is the culvert where I photographed this great blue heron. I had seen it on previous weeks and looked for it every time I drove by and got some shots of it catching small fish, watching it with one eye my rear-view mirror with the other. On this oh-so-early morning it wasn’t at its usual fishing spot but was standing on a branch over the water, and better yet the duckweed had turned red and presented an unusual background. Fortunately there wasn’t any traffic at that early hour and while the heron never yawned like I hoped (apparently my yawns weren’t contagious), it did pose nicely and patiently against that wonderful color. Another car did eventually come and I had to drive off, but I had my pictures.
I never saw the heron there again.
Most cars have grown wider and longer since I last was in the market. But thankfully the sub-compacts are a hotly contested category these days, chock full of the little hatchbacks I love so much. And one of my favorites, goodness to me, is a Chevy. A Chevy! In the twenty-five years I’ve been driving I don’t think they’ve made one car that interested me.
And now they make not one but two!
The Volt is intriguing as, while not small, it is literally the quietest car I could drive to Ridgefield, at least the 2013 model coming out this fall, since I could drive the entire day on electric power, all without those infuriating artificial beeps and spaceship sounds the Toyota and Lexus hybrids make. I could drive nearly all of my work commute on electric power too, and since I despise noise I think I’d find the Volt a rather charming car.
Unfortunately it has very little ground clearance, which could be an issue for Ridgefield and certainly for Yellowstone and the Tetons. And it has no spare tire, so I’d be more hesitant to take it places with little-to-no cell coverage, which is all the places I go on my weeklong trips. And the layout of the car doesn’t work that well for us either, but even so if they had a version with more ground clearance and a proper spare, it would probably be my next car. And if it had all-wheel drive, oh oh oh! Oh oh oh! I’d better go and have a lie down.
The little Sonic shown below also has a low front air dam but I think it’s not quite as bad as the Volt. Not a hybrid so not especially quiet, but of all the sub-compacts, the turbo version is the closest car to my beloved 92 Civic Si. Not crazy amounts of power, but enough to be both fun and fuel efficient, and I’ve always preferred handling to horsepower in any case. It’s a bit pricey for a sub-compact and, the funny thing is, even though it was at the car show back in January, I wasn’t too taken with it then. The instrument cluster on the dashboard seems extremely gimmicky and I found it off-putting when I sat in it. And the car was too new for much to have been written about it.
The Honda Fit was the sub-compact that stole my heart at the show.
But what got my attention on later review were the Sonic’s stellar crash scores, especially the side-impact tests, even on the difficult federal tests. The more I read about it the more I was drawn in. Surprised too to learn that it’s made in Michigan, we lived there when I was a kid so I’m rather smitten with the American mitten. Eventually the Sonic shot up into my top tier, and depending on the hour and day, even sat at the top.
One nice thing on the Chevy website is that as you build out your virtual vehicle, they show you if there are any available on dealer lots in your area, and even show colors and installed options. One weekend the exact car I wanted was sitting on the nearby dealer’s lot. Fortunately for me I had been without a hot shower for a week thanks to a defunct water heater and I didn’t feel like going out. The Sonic was sold soon thereafter, so that temptation was gone.
I’m not ready to buy yet but I was still surprised by how strong the desire for a test drive was when I knew the exact car I wanted was at my fingertips. Tip of the hat to whoever hooked up Chevrolet’s website to their dealer network like that, a very nice touch.
You almost got me.
Boolie 