Urban Rambler

Prowling for Owls

Last year was a particularly spectacular one for Seattle owl lovers, as it marked an every 7-10 year irruption (that is, influx) of Snowy Owls into our area. These chunky, twenty pound beauties draw crowds, but there are several other owl species flapping around town, and October is a typical month to spot them in odd places--like downtown Seattle.
An article I wrote for the Seattle Times explains more:

"Owls have been a harbinger of death in English poetry, and a felicitous sign to ancient Greeks (who had a coin stamped with the image of an owl).

Seattleite Aaron Martin took his sighting this fall as the arrival of extremely good luck." Read more.

(Photo at left is by Paul Bannick. See more of his work at paulbannick.com).

To go on a naturalist-led "owl prowl," sign up with Seattle Parks at the Camp Long website.

Ruminating

Interesting to note that one can spray pesticides in the city to control weeds without discussion or explanation, but when Seattle City Light uses goats (and a shepherd, no less) for the same purpose, they feel it necessary to hold a public meeting to explain their behavior.

Masked Marauders

A Ballard friend told me recently of waking up to the sound of seven raccoons frolicking in the kiddie pool in her backyard. Another in Greenwood emailed me about the raccoon so herkin' she can hear it squeezing through the cat door at night. Once, when I lived in Wallingford, one surprised me as I was taking a bath.
Quaint urban nature moments.

Apparently the masked graspers aren't so content in cities to the south. The P-I offers this hysteria-inducing story.

Paul Bannick's Photos

If you tromp around Discovery Park often, you'll eventually bump into Paul Bannick, whose nature photography was featured in an article in the Sunday Seattle Times a little over a week ago. Many nature photographers specialize in far-flung locations, but Bannick takes many of his splendid shots right here in Seattle and greater Puget Sound. He generously contributed pictures to our Nature in the City: Seattle guidebook a few years ago.

Purple Haze

At Discovery Park yesterday I found the first wave of ripe blackberries,exhaling their sugary scent across the park's sunny meadows. Elephant-sized hedges of the juicy canes demand long pants, stainproof (or purple) shirts, and perhaps a ladder to flatten a trail into the hedge--or, if you're especially steady, to reach the higher berries. Being ubiquitous and non-native, Himalayan blackberries are the fast food of the Seattle foraging world, but I can't imagine a summer here without their sweet generosity. My favorite blackberry picking spots include:

From a kayak along the canal in Fremont

Midway through a bike ride along the Burke-Gilman Trail

and in Discovery Park, where there are so many hedges you could gather enough for several pies. My co-author on the Nature in the City book, Kathryn True, wrote an article about local berries which was published in the Seattle Times about a month ago.

Teeming

The Ballard Locks (as they're informally called--I'm always forgetting Hiram Chittenden's middle initial, and I'm tired of looking him up) are hosting (or getting in the way of, depending on your perspective) the biggest run of sockeye salmon in a decade, along with their gargantuan Chinook salmon brethren, and assorted fishly cohorts. The surface of the water boils with them, but the best place to watch is still through the windows, where you can come eye-to-eye with animals locked in epic struggle. Underwater, up close, the fish that shimmer when they leap into daylight are battered and torn--their backs are green with algae, one I saw had deep, long marks that looked like they were from time spent in a net, and many have raw red gashes. But still they push on toward their spawning grounds, wriggling hard against extinction.

John Beal, Duwamish Champion

Among this city's fouled waterways, the once-splendid Duwamish River, part of which is listed as a Superfund site, tops the list. This is why it is almost impossible to imagine taking on its restoration, as John Beal did almost thirty years ago, after three heart attacks and post-traumatic stress from Vietnam left him, according to doctors, with four months to live. As it turned out, he lasted until last Friday, and he credits the river, in particular the tributary, Hamm Creek, to which he devoted much of his life, with giving him those years. In the process he brought salmon back to the creek, infuriated polluters--and even some friends--and was visited by a bibulous Jacques Cousteau. For more on his life:

Seattle Times obituary

P-I obituary
For more on the history of the Duwamish, photos, and how you can help:
Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition

The Urban Snooze

A recent article in the Olympian lauds the art of backyard camping. It's an alternative to our local version of air conditioning: the basement. I do, however, recommend something other than a hammock for your experiment.

For the story on the ursine lounger, click here.

Taking the Bear out of Bavaria

After weeks of summery silence, I break in, wet towel on forehead, to announce that Bruno, the Italian Bear who roamed (and rampaged) Bavarian Germany in recent weeks was shot and killed this morning. In an odd mashup of historical and literary references ranging from Hannibal to Camus, the German magazine Der Spiegel lamented the death of the two year old bear. Bruno, the first of his species in Germany in 170 years, had been roaming the Bavarian Alps for about a month. His youthful adventures included munching on livestock, getting hit by a car and sitting on the steps of a police station before he was shot this morning. Many Germans are outraged that he wasn't tranquilized and removed to a game farm, or at least to less-populated, more ursine-friendly environs. A condolence blog (mostly in German) has been created for those mourning his passing.

This has nothing to do with life in Cascadia, except as another example of the difficulty we have in protecting the lifestyles of humans without eliminating those of other species.
It also reminds us how much wilder we still have it here. I've seen perhaps ten wild bears in my lifetime. (Okay, 6 or 7 of them were in Alaska).

In a related topic, I just bought the book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasman Tiger for my natural history library. The authors, Margaret Mittelbach and Gregory Crewdson, are the authors of Wild New York, an urban nature guidebook that was inspiring during the creation of Nature in the City: Seattle. It appears to be a collector's edition now. The New York book, not the Seattle one.

A Place to Chill Your Root Beer

The name could be more poetic: Thornton Creek Water Channel? But whatever they're calling the new waterway, uncovering the headwaters of Thornton Creek can only be a good thing. Dip into yeterday's Seattle P-I story and an earlier article to learn more about the project, which is finally seeing daylight after years of legal fisticuffs between the city and its North End citizens. The Thornton Creek Community Library has details about the many glorious restoration projects connected to this waterway.