So, What are You Looking At?

That seems to be a question this Great Blue Heron was asking while sitting by the Sammammish River Trail. Kudos to Edith Lavin

This was the note she sent to my hubby, Gary at Komo TV.

I tried to find the link on your website to upload a photo for you toshare on
your television program, but couldn't find it. I took this photolast month
while walking on the Sammamish River Trail in w:st="on">Redmond.
ENJOY!!!

Edith Lavin

Blue birds return to San Juans

This is a very cool story about blue birds - nurtured in Fort Lewis - being returned to the San Juans. I'm used to the stellar jays, so it's fun seeing these guys back in the neighborhood.

Spotted this weekend near Kent, a baldie, circling above Willis, and another baldie above the land south of Smith Brother farm, this one being harassed by crows, of course. Two blue herons, and about 3 red tails.

Photo courtesy of the TNT

Cascade Middle School, and Auburn Salmon Stream Gets a Boost

A teacher at my daughter's middle school received a $10,000 grant to help and study a salmon stream.

Here's the video!

Songs of Spring

Okay, it's Earth Day today, and while we'll be hearing about all things green, I'd like to focus on one specific green- frogs.

I miss the frogs I used to hear each time this year in our neighbor's old swimming pool, before he filled it in. I was over in Walla Walla last week, and was in a great b-b, by a pond. That night, as I was settling in, watching Dances with Stars, I heard a strange beat coming through the window. Humming really.

When I opened it up, the noise flooded in. Frogs, hundreds of them, or so it seemed, filling the room with their "come hither" chorus. I got some sound, and just tried uploading it, but I think I just managed to put it on my daughter's IPod instead.

Anyway, here's a great site to listen until I put up the real thing later today.

To Celebrate Earth Day, Be Nice to a Stream

I ran across this story about a week ago, and felt it totally hit the mark. Want to support salmon, birds and all critters great and small, well find a stream and be nice to it.

I plan to check to see how the Mill Creek Restoration project is doing in Auburn, and whether those efforts might be duplicated in Kent soon.

Octopi, again

Thanks to Matt, for giving me this YouTube link (in spanish, but no translation needed) about how smart octopi really are. (I'm sure the crab that gets munched on doesn't appreciate it tho).

Also, for those of you that missed it, here is the article on octopi sex.

Six Million Pounds of Trash, One Day

All collected on the beach, according to this Seattle Times article about beach trash. I plan to show this to my daughter too, next time she rolls her eyes at me.

It's also interesting that the volunteers came across living mammals and invertebrates, tangled in line (so if you see some on the beach, please, please, pick it up!).

And if you're interesting in a state version of pick up the trash day, one's coming up April 26, courtesy of Coast Savers.

Last Time I Checked, Salmon Couldn't Breath in Money

I've been watching over the last couple of months as the stories kept cropping up on the salmon runs in Oregon and California, and I wonder just how soon this problem (the fish simply vanish) will occur here. This comes from Grist, BTW.

Braking a CatchSalmon fishing season canceled in California, heavily
restricted elsewhere
For the first time ever, the Pacific Fisheries
Management Council has voted to cancel the salmon fishing season off the coast
of California and much of Oregon due to exceedingly low populations of chinook salmon in the
Sacramento River area. The restrictions apply to commercial as well as
recreational fishers; only a catch of 9,000 hatchery-raised coho salmon will be
allowed this season by sport fishers off central Oregon. However, since the
imperiled salmon that make up the Sacramento River run rarely venture as far
north as Washington, restrictions there were not as harsh. The council voted to
allow a combined commercial, sport, and tribal catch of 45,000 coho salmon and
77,500 chinook salmon this year off the Washington coast. But overall, the
outlook is still quite bleak. "Collectively, from Canada to Mexico, this will be
the worst ever season off the West Coast," said Don McIssac of the PFMC.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency and
requested federal financial assistance for the state's fishing industry.

Probably soon, as this story tells about the payoff so the dams will stay up, the river will still be used for agriculture, and well the fish, it sucks to be you.

This story today, tells of the season simply being cancelled in Oregon and California because there are no more fish to catch.


Sketch from www.thesalmon.com.ar

Plastic Bags, the True Evil? Or is it that water bottle you're holding?

I read with interest Danny Westneat's column in the Seattle Times yesterday. It's about a garbologist (flotsam guy) and oceanographer, talking about the impact of pastic bags and Mayor Nickels effort to tax them out of existance.

It's not the pastic bags, according to Curt Ebbesmeyer, that are in that swirling mess outside of Hawaii, or in the stomachs of birds which starve to death, but chips of pastic that come from computer monitors, from wrapping from plastic bottles.

I plan show this to my daughter, next time she rolls her eyes as I start picking up garbage on the beach, whether I have my beach naturalist hat on or not.

Seagrass, It's More Than You Think

A friend of mine at SPU went on to get his masters and PhD in this area, and is probably still teaching it at the Univ. of Hawaii.

At the time, all of us biology majors scratched our heads and said "seagrass?" But it is a big deal. It's vital for babies on the ocean to hide out, and an important link in the food chain. Not a heck of a lot of it at Des Moines Beach, but there are some nice beds further north in Seattle. Check out this entire Web site, devoted to seagrass.

Yes, It's a Quail

As we were driving to school yesterday down our Kent road, we both looked up at our neighbor's fence at the same time, and lo, there was a male quail. Looking back.

It was fat, and I didn't see any female quails hanging about. I remember when we first moved to Scenic Hill 20 years ago, we'd see Chinese Pheasants. But in all that time, I think this is the first quail I've seen.

If You're Going to Mate Only Once, Better Make it Count

That seems to be the view of octopuses, whether large or small, not matter what species, according to this Berkeley Study.

Give this story a good read, and watch the videos with it. Octopi intrigue, from strangling rivals, to pretending to be females, to holding hands and long embraces.

Next time I find one in a Coke bottle or under a rock, as I did last summer on Des Moines beach, I'm going to look at this amazing creature with new respect.

So is a Prius a Good Car, or a Bad one, Greenwise?

That was the questions confronting my family of late, when we decided to dump our old Plymouth Voyager (DONT BUY THESE CARS), which was a lemon, and choose a new car to run until the wheels fell off.

I had narrowed it down to a either a Toyota Camary, Honda Civic or a Prius, figuring with gas prices edging toward $4 a gallon, and my effort to green up my habits, this was possibly a good choice.

But then I heard from a man I was interviewing for a freelance story in Renton, that in fact, there is an entire environmental wasteland outside Toronto that comes from mining the nickle used in the batteries in the Prius cars. OK, hadn't thought about that.

This article in Slate also gave me food for thought. It says the Hummer/Prius comparison is bull. We ended up buying a Civic, BTW.

Has Anyone Seen Birds Like This?

Frankly, I hope not.

The fact that something in our environment is causing this deformations - which eventually result in the birds starving to death - makes me a bit ill. Anyway, if you do, report to the local fish and wildlife, EPA or Audubon rep.

The PI story that alerted me to this is here.