Bald Eagles At The Hood Canal, Washington

In spring eagles gather at the Hood Canal in Washington. What brings them there is a little fished called the Midshipman. The female Midshipmen lay their eggs in the oyster beds and then leave for the male fish to tend to the eggs. The problem for the fish is the oyster beds are in shallow water so that when the tide goes out the fish are exposed. All sorts of birds come to feast on the fish, and among them are lots and lots of eagles.

The behavior shown in the two images above is called grappling. It is a cartwheeling spinning display with talons locked. I had heard that this was courting behavior, however, according to the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Wildlife Institute, this is aggressive territorial behavior. In every grappling image I have the eagle on the bottom looks distressed, while the one on top appears very much in control.

Here is an image of an eagle with a freshly caught Midshipmen, being tailed by one of the ever present crows. The eagles aggressive birds for sure but the ravens and crows are not daunted by them and put up quite an aggressive display themselves. Sometimes, when watching them with the eagles I will wonder if they didn't wish they were eagles.

This is perhaps my favorite bald eagle image. This was taken just before the turn to dive down and steal a fish from a blue heron in the oyster beds. I feel like this image captures the elegance and majesty of these amazing raptors.

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Art Display At The Center For Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

The Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa, has a wonderful program that encourages artist members to display their work. The work is hung in the Social Hall and typically has about twenty pieces hanging for two months at a time. On March 1rst I will be hanging several images taken in Iceland, along with some wildlife images, including foxes, coyotes, eagles and kites. I will also have some paintings by my mother and two of my own. I am pretty excited about this showing. One of the pictures I will have in the show is of Godafoss, a beautiful waterfall in Iceland. When I first saw pictures of this waterfall I knew I wanted to go to Iceland to take pictures of it. This composition required gettin into some very cold water.

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The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

Notes To My Mother

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