Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Reflections on a cloudy day turned the surface of Horse Lake white when I exposed for a female hooded merganser as she swam past my car. The auto tour at Ridgefield is one of my favorite places in the Northwest as you get to see such lovely wild animals like this up close and behaving naturally, frequently without disturbing them.
I was sitting next to Bull Lake for a while, watching a male bufflehead diving for food and photographing him whenever he swam close. I’ve been wanting to take more environmental portraits so when he moved a ways off I turned my lens to this distant ring-necked duck as the rain moved in. I was happy enough with the early pics but then the rain turned heavy and pounded the water in large drops. Ducks are built for the wet of course but even so I felt a bit sorry for him as the water exploded around him. The hard rain lasted only seconds, then he and the other ducks resumed their feeding.
If you’d like a closer view of what a ring-necked duck looks like, I took this picture almost a year earlier just one lake over. It was also raining, but only lightly.
The rain here in the Northwest is frequent during the cooler months but it’s usually more drizzle than downpour, yet it has absolutely poured at times this month. I love photographing in the rain and am always a little disappointed when there’s a good strong shower but nothing to shoot. Fortunately I was already watching a group of shovelers feeding in Long Lake when a sudden deluge of large raindrops pounded the surface of the water. The ducks of course are built for wet weather and fed unabated, and soon enough the rain softened in intensity.
We set a record for the wettest December ever when we were only three weeks into the month, and it has often rained since then, so it is no surprise that the water levels at Ridgefield are a little high. But not nearly so much as this picture would suggest, that sign is back near a hunter’s blind near the shore of Bull Lake, which itself is managed to mimic the flood plains of the Columbia before the dams went in. An unusually hot and dry summer left us with little snowpack in the mountains and we haven’t seen the widespread flooding we got when I moved here almost twenty years ago.
I took advantage of a two week vacation from work to return to Ridgefield (and going out to do photography in general) after a year’s absence. I’ve been up there six times so far and will probably go a few more times before it is time to head back to work. I’ve had a lot of fun and mostly photographed animals I’ve photographed many times before, biggest surprise was finding a short-eared owl up close, but I’ve been more surprised by what I haven’t seen: mammals apart from the ever-present nutria, and more importantly, my beloved bitterns.
I knew I was going to be hard-pressed to find bitterns when I drove by Rest Lake, which has by far been my best spot to find them the past few years, and saw that the way the water and the plants are in that area, the bitterns would be a lot more exposed than they like to be. I looked for them on every visit but didn’t see a single one. I still have a lot of old pictures to edit and get back online so regardless bittern pictures will be coming.
It was good to be back, the key will be to keep the momentum going and keep heading out once I’m back at work, as it is going to be a hectic month or two.
A simple portrait of a male bufflehead as he swims across Rest Lake on a winter afternoon.
A shoveler swims past late in the day on New Year’s Eve of 2014, meaning she likely survived into the new year. The little bullfrog below almost made it into the new year but an egret plucked it from the shadows shortly before sunset. The bullfrogs move pretty slowly in the cold of winter and if spotted are easy pickings for the egrets and herons and bitterns that patrol these shores.
These mating bullfrogs were serenely floating in the water while around them was chaos, with males playing leapfrog and wrestling each other into submission and croaking loudly. The male here is the one on top with his characteristic yellow throat and large tympani (the eardrums, the big circles behind the eyes). The water was mostly still but there was a subtle current and they both used their webbed rear feet to control their speed and balance. They don’t have webbing on their front toes, so the female used her front legs to maintain balance while the male has his wrapped around her body.
Sometimes animal behavior seems all too familiar to our own.
A small flock of ring-necked ducks was diving under the shallow waters of Bull Lake to feed, sometimes bringing up what I’m guessing is the root of an aquatic plant. Whatever it was, the ducks were very fond of it, and the one that surfaced with it would swim away from the others while trying to quickly eat it, all while any nearby ducks would try to swim over and steal it and eat it for themselves. I wasn’t sure which of these two males actually surfaced with the plant but the chase was on.
While in a mad dash to escape with his food, the ring-neck swam directly over a lesser scaup as she was surfacing, leaving her rather startled but none the worse for wear. He held onto his prize and was able to eat it at last.
Coots often hang out in large groups and when it gets cold enough to freeze the ponds at Ridgefield, such as this cold New Year’s Eve morning, the constant movement of the flock helps keep part of the pond from freezing. This not only benefits them, as they dive under the water both to feed and to avoid hunting eagles, but other waterfowl as well, such as the bufflehead who would join them the following morning.
Rain ripples the water as a common muskrat feeds in Rest Lake.
Boolie 