Heron on Wire -- Balancing Act

I was startled one day to look up and see a heron high up on a wire. I don't recall ever seeing one perched that way and was amazed at how its bulk could be balanced on a narrow wire that has some give in the wind. Maybe it's no different from a branch, but out in the wide open it's is quite the sight.

The Purple Marten Scouts Return

Rita Price is our local purple marten coordinator, taking her lead after Dave Fouts passed away. A few weeks ago she held a Sunday gathering where people on the island with purple marten gourds gave updates on last year's nesting. Rita followed that with an email:
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There was a documented female Purple Martin sited  abt 15 m ssw of Olympia WA this week!  Seems like we may have another early year… Keep your ears open for their song, and if you do see one, please report it to the PM scouting site.  https://www.purplemartin.org/research/8/scout-arrival-study/

(or drop me a line and I’ll gladly do it for you!)

Whoooo hoooo!!  Here we go!

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So of course when on the Sunday morning of April 7th I heard and then saw my first purple martens of the year, I dropped her this note, and not long after I wrote it, there were 8 of them--enough to fill all my gourds with nesting martens ... 

Hello Rita,

Three purple martens this morning! I am thrilled to hear and see them. I went and signed up on the conservation site and filed a scout report.

Thanks for keeping us informed and for all that you are doing for the martens. 

Pink and purple sunset

Having lived in the woods for so many years, I never stop being thrilled to see a spectacular sunset sweep across the river's open horizon. This time I saw the pink and purple colors reflected on the water in front of my desk and went outside to get the full view. I can't resist standing there until the sun has fully set and the afterglow is gone.

Gutter Garden -- How Embarrassing

Sometimes one's place is just an embarrassment, with maintenance flaws in full view. That was the case with one stretch of my gutter facing the river. There's just not an easy way to clean it, and so I didn't. First grasses were visible growing out of it, and then something that looked like a bush or small tree. People would paddle or float by and laugh and comment. Finally I got worried that having a blocked-up gutter might damage the house. 

I gave myself a sunny Sunday morning to tackle it. I asked my neighbor Courtney to come over and spot for me while I climbed up the ladder with a hoe taped with another into an extra-long pole. I strapped the tall extension ladder to a trellis so that it wouldn't move. Courtney came over and looked at the ladder and looked at me and volunteered to go up herself, since she's taller and has longer arms. I accepted her offer. She got some of it out, but a lot of it wouldn't budge.

Then suddenly, here comes a person walking across the roof--her next-door neighbor, Tom Hekker. "What are you guys doing?" he asked with a laugh. He walked over to the gutter, pulled out the remaining "garden," tossed it in the river and walked back across the roof home. We couldn't even figure out how or where he got up on my roof and he wouldn't say. After Courtney left, I went and reached down and picked up the line of plantings, now floating, to take pictures of what had been. I lined them up on my deck and left them there as a reminder that some maintenance tasks ought not be left undone. 

Squall then a double rainbow

(Note: I can't figure out how to get these blog images to run side-by-side. No matter what I try, one leaps to the next line, so you will just have to image these two photos as a panorama.) Late afternoon we had a horrendous squall come through. The rain was thick and heavy and you could barely see past it, and loud and raucous-sounding. I had to go out soon and I was not looking forward to walking all the way from my houseboat to the parking lot in such a downpour. Then right before it was time to leave, it all stopped. I got in my car and as I drove past the island's wide open farm fields, this double rainbow appeared spectacularly. Both the main rainbow and the "ghost" rainbow above it went from horizon to horizon. The main rainbow was bright and brilliant colors. I pulled off to take this photo and on that short drive to the bridge saw two other cars pulled over and people doing likewise. 

"Swimming Upriver" art bench by Donna Mauch

I could hardly believe that "Swimming Upriver" was the title for this beautiful bench. I am a big fan of the artist Donna Mauch and have a number of her handmade bird houses. Mostly I've bought them at Cracked Pots--my favorite of all the art shows, where everything is made from recycled stuff. I typically go with $100 that I have saved up, and arrive the first thing on the first day to find the best art before it gets snapped up. This year I had extra money because a friend I'd helped with some medical problems gave me another $100. I wasn't sure what I would buy--one big thing or a lot of small things--when I came to Donna's area and saw this bench. It is made from the frames of two chairs held together with cast-off wood, painted in shades of blue. I'd had a 30=year old teak bench that had eventually rotted away and I could see this would be perfect for perching on my deck. It was too big and heavy for me to take that day so Donna and a friend delivered it. It looks glorious on my riverside deck, although I have to admit it's positioned to look downriver.

The burned-out phone line box

This is what you get when the person hired to power-wash the walkway doesn't realize how hot the washer motor can get. Nor pay attention to the fact that said motor is at the exact height of our Century Link phone boxes, which are exposed along the walkway. Inside the house, what you get is a dead phone line and no WiFi connection. Ah, well, life is like that and the fellow was young and we all make mistakes. Good thing Century Link was great and came out the next day, replaced the box, and made sure everything was up and running. Yay!

Heron by Moonlight

I guess you can't see the heron in this photo, despite my copying it at the highest resolution. No matter. This is our moorage walkway and there is is, in the distance, outside my door. I love coming home at night and encountering a heron as I walk along the floating pathway with its warm yellow lights. Sometimes one will be on a side deck of a building. Or maybe on a roof. Often I don't see it until I come upon it and it flies off silently into the night. I always think it's a good sign that it flies off silently, my hearing just its wingbeats, instead of the heron's usual why-have-you-disturbed=me sqwa-sqwa-sqwa. Most morning I see heron poop splat on the walkway, but this was the first time at night I'd ever seen the heron itself--made more special because it was right in front of my own doorstep.

What is this crazy swallow doing?

I have not been able to figure out what this crazy violet green swallow is doing, nor can any of my birder friends. It is flying up to the window and landing--not as if it's trying to get in, nor as if it sees a rival out there. I feared that it would hurt itself, and so I pasted orange sheets of paper across the window, thinking it would not see any reflections and not consider that area as a place to land. No such luck. It just landed on the edge of the paper. It is part of a nesting pair of violet green swallows living in an Audubon-store violet green nest box right above this window. The box has an elongated oval hole to keep out unwanted species. Eventually the pair raised three young and the mystery was never solved.

The Green Heron Who Follows Me As I Swim

Ah, the greenback heron has returned again in summer. I will presume it is the same one that's been here the past few years. As I do my regular circumnavigation swims around the moorage, when I'm in the backwater I try to move as unnoticeable as I can, as though I'm a log that happens to float upriver, just in case the greenback is around, so I don't scare it off. This year I have had a thrill--it has been on the shore and "walked" along upriver as I moved by, following me until it gets into a deep thicket and disappears from view. In this photo it is sitting on a walkway stringer outside my guest room window.

Hummingbirds Watching the Olympics

When I started watching the Olympics, the hummingbirds at first were freaked out and would fly up to the feeders then fly off. I presumed they were scared off by sound they could hear through the windows and the flashing images on the screen. But as I kept watching, I guess they got hungry (hangry?) and figured What the Heck and now land. But what they do is take a sip, then look up at the Olympics, take a sip, look up at the Olympics, and repeat for umpteen times. I tried to take a photo catching the hummer’s head pointed toward the TV screen, but even saving the highest MBs on my iPhone I couldn’t get a good enough image to enlarge enough to really see, but you get the picture.