Mike in the Wild

The sunrise sail across Puget Sound was calm and mostly clear.  The trees hugging the Olympic Peninsula coastline and sheltering seaside mansions were the color of red wine on that early autumn morning I passed by.  I could just make out the peninsula's distant mountain peaks to the southwest as they caught the first rays of morning light.  As the Seattle skyline came into view the rising sun framed the iconic Space Needle, enveloped in a slight haze of distant wildfire smoke. Throughout the Ruby Princess's sail into Seattle's Elliott Bay, my eyes were peeled for wildlife.  While orcas and humpback whales evaded me, several harbor seals and a diving pair of Western grebes appeared, joining the many sea gulls and cormorants crisscrossing the waterways.  However the bird that stood out the most was one I encountered just as we moored alongside our berth in Seattle, a city just starting to buzz with the noises of its Tuesday workday.  The animal wasn't a hundr...