Field View: Drake Baldwin's three-run home run

[mouakter13]

• Swamp lanterns, the expanded inflorescences of skunk cabbage, are still showy in places, brightening the understory, ditches, and swales.



Next


Stay


• The fiddleheads of ferns and the stems o f fireweed country wise email marketing list seem to grow measurably from day to day, ignoring the unfriendly weather.

• An Arctic tern cruised elegantly along the shore, paused briefly, and dove straight down. Lunch was served!

• Big flocks of scoters, mostly surf and white-winged, drifting along the shores. They seem to talk almost as constantly as geese and humans do, but perhaps a bit more quietly.

• A flight of sandpipers over a lagoon, perfectly synchronized and coordinated, turning to flash their pale undersides and turning again to almost merge with the background.

• A tree swallow gathering nesting material, sorting out the coarsest twigs from the more convenient smaller ones.

• A natty white-crowned sparrow foraging in the leaf litter, its bright white head stripes clean and clear.

• A flock of violet-green swallows swirling in rapid circles over a pond, probably foraging on insects emerging from the waters below.

• The “draperies” of Sitka alder catkins, making color at the forest edges. One observer saw them being investigated by a marmot.

• Beach marmots. Usually found in alpine areas, they have also found suitable conditions in talus slopes by some of our rocky beaches. On a recent visit to the Shrine, lots of folks enjoyed seeing them very close to the trail, seeming to pose for photo-ops. They can breed successfully out there, and I’d like to know where their burrows are. The photogenic ones I saw looked small and may have been yearlings.

Readers may have their own points of brightness to add. The important thing is that there ARE some!