Month: October 2005

Back to Belfair

We’ve been busy entertaining company from California, so I haven’t had time to finish Elizabeth Bishop The Complete Poems yet.

I did take our guests to Belfair today, and though there were remarkably few birds, I did manage to get a few shots I was happy with.

First, I managed to get a decent shot of a Spotted Towhee, a bird I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get a picture of for quite awhile:

My recent pursuit of the elusive Belted Kingfisher continued today, as one met us nearly at the start of the hike and proceeded to streak up and down the river for the next two hours, all the time refusing to sit in one spot long enough for me to get a good shot of it. Still, I think this shot is by far the best I’ve gotten so far:

Since I’m seeing these guys everywhere now, I’m convinced that I will manage to get a great shot one of these days, probably when I’m least expecting it. As I said today, waiting for that perfect shot of one should keep me going for a while.

Tai Chi Master

I’ve spent quite a lot of money buying a camera and lens that can capture images quite this crisply:

Why is it, then, that I’m driven to experiment in Photoshop until I end up with images that look like this

and that I actually prefer to the original, though it’s not nearly as sharp and could probably have been captured with any cheap digital camera on the market?

Is it simply perverse human nature that drives us to want what others have and we don’t, and, once we have it, and only then, to realize it really wasn’t what we wanted after all?

Or do we have to prove to ourselves that we can do what others are doing before we can ever hope to find our own vision?

Duck !

Duck season started today in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s a good thing these two were practicing their getaway yesterday:

And, starting today the best parts of Nisqually Wildlife Refuge will be closed from now through January due to hunting season . Visitors to the refuge seem to subscribe to two different theories on why the best parts of the refuge are off limits for the next three months depending on their particular biases.

The first theory is that you have to walk dangerously close to the hunters on both sides of the refuge, and they’re worried about someone getting shot. If this is the main worry, why don’t they just make it illegal to fire into the refuge?

The second theory seems to be that they’re trying to provide a safe place for ducks and other birds, and they don’t want people walking through the refuge and disturbing birds already traumatized by hunters. I’d like to think this is the primary reason they’re closing it, but I wouldn’t bet on that since most wildlife refuges in the United States are open to hunting, which seem like a rather strange definition of “refuge”?

I know you can’t even walk the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge during hunting season without a shotgun and hunting licence because hunting always trumps the mere enjoyment of nature.

Sadly, it seems to be a fact that much, if not most, of the money for bird preservation comes from hunting tags. Virtually all increases in refuge funding during the Bush administration have been derived from hunting licenses