Mike in the Wild

I was still in the Salish Sea, heading west through the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Ruby Princess.  Hours earlier, the naturalist on my morning whale watching tour out of Victoria, far to the east behind me, told me that the waters around Port Renfrew were great for wildlife viewing.  Sea otters, marine birds, and yes, orcas, all took advantage of the nutrient-rich waters I'd soon be entering, just a few miles from the open Pacific Ocean.  As a result I roamed my ship's outside Promenade Deck all afternoon, waiting for the Ruby to enter this thriving wildlife habitat. Light fog didn't help the visibility; I wouldn't get a clear view of land until reaching San Francisco in a day and a half.  Nevertheless, I added to the long list of common murre and sea gull sightings I compiled from the morning.  I also saw what might have been a marbled murrelet.  Finally, a large fish, possibly a salmon, made several leaps out of the water.  Alas, no marine mammals...

Almost five full days into my seven-day cruise in the Pacific Northwest, I still had my sights set on finding orcas.  I had originally set out on the trip hoping to see both puffins and orcas, but had given up on the idea of encountering any of the seabirds, having already discovered I was a month late to see them close to land at one their major nesting sights in Oregon.   Having sailed by Washington State's San Juan Islands and passing Vancouver Island very early in the morning, I saw a humpback whale breach as the sun started to rise and we made our way up the Strait of Georgia.  We soon entered Burrard Inlet, passed under Lions Gate Bridge, and steamed into Vancouver Harbor.  With still no orca sightings under my belt, I decided over breakfast to book a ship excursion for the next day in Victoria, our cruise's last stop.  At $160, the tour was expensive.  But with the name of the creature in the tour's title - "Ocean Wildlife and Orca Exploration C...

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...

I started my trip to the Pacific Northwest with my sights set on orcas and puffins.  A week on the cruise ship Ruby Princess, sailing out of San Francisco and visiting Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, not to mention two days on the open Pacific Ocean, seemed to all offer good chances at spotting these sea creatures.  Just a couple of hours after leaving San Francisco, I watched a humpback whale breaking the water's surface and diving, its flukes rising in the air and illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun.  It was hard not to be excited about what else I'd discover on my weeklong cruise! The first stop was Astoria in Oregon.  It's the oldest American-founded city west of the Rocky Mountains and is near the terminus of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  While many tourists visit the explorers' settlement, Fort Clatsop, I was more interested in the area's natural history.  As a result I rented a car and drove twenty-five miles south along t...

July brought the first rufous hummingbirds to my Prescott cabin.  Usually they arrive amidst the commotions of the first monsoon storms, right at the beginning of July.  However the early rains of June seemed to confuse the birds' arrivals, postponing them until later in the month.  Nevertheless, robust males eventually pushed the dominant Anna's hummingbirds out of my yard and away from my sugar water feeders for part of the summer. By August, juveniles and females started arriving and the males began leaving the area, continuing their migrations south.  These late arrivals kept on mostly winning the battles against the Anna's - but not against any lingering rufous males - for total domination of the feeders.   As September welcomed autumn this week, the late arrivals mostly decamped.  A few cold weather-tolerant stragglers still remained, stealing a sip from the sugar water or a wildflower.  The next time I visit Prescott in early October, the f...

Watching the birds at my Prescott feeders grew a bit mundane as the days were shortening in early September.  All the tanagers and grosbeaks, along with the male rufous hummingbirds, had mostly migrated south.  These colorful migrants left the suet and seeds to the year-round mountain residents: nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and bushtits, all markedly plainer and predominately dressed in black, white, and shades of gray.  The only bright colors were the blues of the scrub jays and the yellows of the goldfinches. A tell-tale sign of the change in seasons was when a new bird appeared several weeks ago, a chipping sparrow that was soon  followed by a second.  Regular late summer visitors, they've been exploring my yard ever since, harvesting the seeds of drying wildflowers and even scavenging scattered millet kernels from below my own seed feeder.  With a plain buff chest and a streaked black-and-brown backside, the most distinguishable feature of the spar...

The biggest fear for every Arizonan is running into a rattlesnake, worse even than encountering a scorpion or tarantula.  While it's not uncommon to find the two arachnids around your home, you're fortunately much less likely to find a rattlesnake in your yard.  I actually thought I discovered a baby rattler in my garden two weeks ago while watering a recently planted tree.  The small snake squirmed and slithered while the water slowly encroached in the planter box.  Only about a foot long and quite skinny, the reptile looked like a rattlesnake to me except for its lack of a rattle, which hasn't yet formed in very young rattlers.  With a yard-long garden stake, I raised the timid snake to get a better look and snap a few photos with my cellphone before finally allowing the animal to coil defensively in a tiny, dry landscape light. The snake isn't the only reptile living in my Phoenix backyard.  As soon as the days begin to lengthen in late winter, a large d...