Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
We have great blue herons in Sequim but I was tickled with several unobstructed views that I had on our recent visit to the Skagit Valley. This fellow was perched in a tree; by the time I caught him in my lens he’d taken off directly overhead.
This one gave me a rather pleasing vanity shot.
Oh, those feathers! Great blue herons are really beautiful birds, aren’t they?
One of the most impressive views of the Skagit Valley migrating birds are the great masses of them when a flock takes flight. Camera in hand, I only caught a few here and there. The best I managed was here.
However many are in the air I find swans beautiful and elegant and often their wing movements synchronize as they fly.
They’re beautiful to see.
Interestingly, even in the middle of a flock swans take off and land without bumbling into one another.
Smaller flocks of trumpeter swans that gathered nearer to roads in the Skagit Valley permitted closer shots. Some foraged in grass, others in the muddy fallow fields.
Maybe it’s common among swans but I was impressed with this one’s version of swan yoga. Maybe it was sick of standing in mud but if this isn’t a variation on a yoga balance pose I don’t know what is.
As if to cap its performance it blithely tucked its head back, still on one leg.
The Skagit Valley, about a 3 hour drive east of Sequim (including a ferry ride), is a winter birding hotspot. I’d seen terrific photos and videos of great masses of snow geese and swans in the flooded agricultural fields. It seemed a practical way to see what I could learn about shooting birds by paying a visit. This scene greeted us not long after we arrived in LaConner, a sweet little town at the edge of the Skagit Valley.
We roamed the valley for a couple of days. This was as close as we could get to large groups of birds. We found many smaller flocks of swans not far from the road, feeding, resting, honking, and bugleing.
This was a group of hundreds. A wide angle lens would have done it more justice but I was still excited by the sight.
We took a short winter trip to the Skagit Valley recently. It is an agricultural region north of Seattle. In the spring there are vast fields of tulips and daffodils and other crops. In the winter many flooded fields are temporary homes to migrating birds. We went bird hunting but also enjoyed the beauty of the area. So we’ll be exploring another part of Washington state in coming days.
For those who wonder, the white behind the trees is either low clouds, controlled burns, or chimney smoke. It’s too wet for wildfires.
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. today as he is honored on this national holiday: a brave, thoughtful, and articulate leader.
Yesterday’s subject was rock and roll. It reminded me of another musical interlude I experienced in August. This bag piper greeted arriving visitors at the hotel where we stayed in Victoria. Mind you, he wasn’t stationed at the door for us. I was told he was there for a tour group. That group, unlike us, paid the piper.
Though I’ve witnessed the Northern California fires from the comfort and safety of Washington State, this has been a dreadful week. I lived in Sonoma County for seven years in a community immediately south of Santa Rosa, one of the ground zero locations of the fires that have destroyed over 3,500 houses and other structures. Knowing the area, the scale of the devastation there and in Napa County and beyond is inconceivable. California is in my thoughts and prayers.
The photo above is a winter view from an office window in Petaluma, about 15-20 miles south of Santa Rosa. The rolling hills in the background are along the eastern boundary of Sonoma County leading to Napa. Beyond them is terrain that is now on fire.