Tag: River S Unit

Two Halves

Two Halves

I got lucky with the top picture: the soft, warm light of sunset, the frost from an unusually cold winter day, the perfect pairing of these two baby nutria, one facing forward, the other backward, and the one nutria eating a blade of grass while holding it in its tiny hands. Then they each walked off into the shadows and out of my sight. Nutria are not native to the Northwest but they are by far the most commonly seen of our aquatic rodents, and as you can see are able to give birth and raise young even during winter.

A baby nutria walks across ice on a cold winter's day.

A baby nutria walks across frost and grass at the end of a cold winter's day.

You’ve Got a Little Something …

As the rain pelts down a female lesser scaup swims with plants on her back that she picked up during her last dive to feed at Horse Lake at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Ridgefield, Washington in December 2011

I’ve often thought about creating an album called “You’ve Got a Little Something …” to highlight animals that are carrying around a bit of their environment they picked up along the way. Diving ducks like this lesser scaup sometimes surface with plants that snagged on their back during their last feeding foray, but they often shed them on their next (as happened here, she surfaced after her next dive with a clean back).

Good Morning

A view of Rest Lake at sunrise from my Subaru XV Crosstrek

The last day of the year got off to a cold but sunny start. I stopped at Rest Lake when I came across this great blue heron sitting beside the frozen channel and then sat listening to the cackling geese and tundra swans in the lake behind it. I couldn’t resist a self-portrait when the rising sun created a perfect shadow of my little Crosstrek on the bank.