9/8 – Though it’s still warm, there are less insects around, which I’ll miss. I hardly mention them in these journals, because I know so little about them; possibly I don’t want to admit my ignorance even to myself. Really I have little to say… Read More
Like many writers, I keep a (sometimes) daily journal about my life and the natural history events, largely bird related, that I experience. The following blog posts, organized by month are excerpts from my summer living and working the San Juan Islands of Washington State.… Read More
Thanks for visiting Wingtrip. This post is a part of a project called Visualizing the Pitayal. Click here for an explanation of the project. Click here for a complete listing of all the posts in the project so far, to start at the beginning. And if you are impressed… Read More
“The sea is a really nice thing, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it is. Makes you feel calm.” “Why is that?” “Probably because it’s so empty, with nothing on it” Hoshino said, pointing. “You wouldn’t feel so calm if there was a 7-eleven over there, or a… Read More
We’d been standing there for nearly an hour and they hadn’t stopped. Any one moment framed at least 50, sometimes more, Sooty Shearwaters, winging past in what seemed an infinite supply. No number of encounters with this display make it less jaw dropping. Birds of… Read More
Unless you’ve encountered a truly large flock of migrating songbirds, it’s difficult to imagine the mass exodus of neotropical migrants vacillating between North and South. In reality we only get small views of their journeys, filtered by space and time, augmented by our imaginations and… Read More
“[H]is music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of the rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from… Read More
It’s rather amusing to think about the Summer Solstice in the Pacific Northwest, especially considering the weather today. Here in Seattle, we don’t consider it summer until after the fourth of July. Yet many of the breeding birds are done singing by then, having had… Read More
Shoving as much natural history as a place holds into the space of five days will never promise restfulness. During the course of a few days we drove hundreds of miles in pursuit of birds, mammals, and reptiles. I’m feeling pretty pooped just thinking about… Read More
Who the hell set my alarm for 3 AM? Right. That was me. Four hours later I was in Ephrata, Washington, doubting my sanity. There were two cars in our caravan. Five demented birders. We had about twelve hours of driving from Seattle, Washington to… Read More
Wingtrip 