Here are some catkins caught in silhouette on one of our recent grey days. Despite persistent gloom, plants are taking off as if it really is spring. They’ve got the right idea. That really cheers me.
Time for more pink
The native red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) is splashing color everywhere in the natural landscape these days. And early bloomer, it announces spring with with early unfurling leaves, then vivid shades of pink as the blossoms come out to play. Hummingbirds and butterflies love the flowers.
I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille
This is a Brewer’s blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus), one of our very common birds. This one saw my camera, turned and said, “Be sure to get my good side” as he waited to hear the “click.”
The stubborn stack
This is a chimney stack at the former PenPly facility in Port Angeles. It was part of a plywood-making operation that went out of business after a 70-year presence on the Olympic Peninsula. Multiple generations of some families worked there. The mill was closed in late 2011 and the site was cleared. . .except for the stack. The stack met its end yesterday, but not without a fight.
Business took us to Port Angeles yesterday and afterwards we decided we’d go take a look. We got to a good vantage point an hour and a quarter early. After all, how often do you get to see a 175-foot chimney stack taken down? Turns out, for us, never so far. As the 3:30 appointed hour approached, the crowd around us grew. This was a big deal in the community and lots of people wanted to see it.
If you look at the bottom of the stack there’s a cloud of dust billowing out from 20 holes filled with explosives. As the explosives detonated, a cable pulled the stack to the left, in the direction it was intended to fall. It seemed to lean ever so slightly left but it didn’t fall. The cable either broke or released and the resilient stack returned to its locked and upright position. The dust cleared. A group of men in hard hats approached carefully, gingerly, then began to work around it with increasing resolution.
By the time we left, an hour later, it was still standing. The local paper reported yesterday evening that workers pulled out a big electrical saw and torches to sever stuborn steel rebar that insisted on doing its job of keeping the stack standing. It finally tilted and fell around 6:15, after most of us had give up and gone home.
Walkies
I’m small, I’m cute, and I’m tired. Did you see how fast my legs had to go just to keep up with you?
Big bird
If you have any interest in aviation you may be aware of the problems the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets encountered with batteries in this new generation of airplanes. After a rollout with some fits and starts planes were grounded after battery fires. “So, what does this have to do with Sequim?” you may rightly ask.
We’re not generally in the flight pattern of commercial aviation. If I’m not mistaken, the only big commercial jets that fly over our airspace are Boeing jets and, specifically, Dreamliners that are being tested for certification. This is a LOT Polish Airlines 787 that flew over Dungeness last Wednesday.
The Dreamliner has a distinctive wing and very graceful lines to my eye. It made its final certification flight on Friday for its redesigned battery system. I’m sure there are a good many people at Boeing who will be happy to breathe normally again after this chapter ends.
Nesting
Birds around here only need a couple days of springlike weather to get the idea: time to nest! I caught this sweet little hummingbird (a female Anna’s, I believe) gathering some nest materials among the marsh cattails.
She got a good beakfull before she took off for parts unknown. Ever seen a hummingbird nest? Scroll down.
We had a bamboo wind chime in California that housed a hummingbird nest. To our delight it was located just outside a glass sliding door. It was quite a hub of activity as first the hummer built the nest and then negotiated a no-fly zone with all the neighborhood birds that used the fountain located about four feet below it. They worked it out. As long as the hummingbird nested above other birds flew in low, never invading the airspace of about two feet around the wind chime and the nest. Eggs hatched in a couple of weeks (16-17 days according to my bird book) and we saw at least one miniscule beak. Work prevented our collapsing into full time viewing. It seemed they were gone in almost the blink of an eye. We waited months before we examined and then collected the nest from our wind chime. The exterior includes tiny pieces of soft redwood bark and lichen. The interior is very soft. It could well be cattail down. And the paper clip pictured here is actually slightly smaller than the standard chrome variety. It is 1-1/8 inch long.
I love hummingbirds. I may post a couple more from this series. But tomorrow: another sort of bird. . .a very big one.
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