Tag Archives: Salish Sea

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Beach spook

You are walking on East Beach, Marrowstone Island. It is sunny. The tide is way out, with fields of bright green slippery algae. You stay on the rocks. Some of them are slippery too. There are crows and an eagle, on the beach, feeding. There is a great blue heron. You can see sea lions out on the rocks, though your camera battery has died, again.

Suddenly you nearly step in THIS:

You stumble away, horrified, knowing that the creature stranded on the beach is FOOD now. You hear laughter, soft at first. Suddenly you see the face above and REALIZE: the whole beach is giggling and laughing: BECAUSE YOU TOO ARE FOOD.

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Taken at East Beach, Marrowstone Island, yesterday.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: SPOOK!

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pigeon guillemots

These are called sea pigeons locally.

We were trying to figure out who lives in the sand cliff holes on Marrowstone Island.

We see something fly out but weren’t quite sure who it is.

And then, aha! We see an owner.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pigeon_Guillemot/id

They look like ducks except the beak is not duck like. From the Cornell All About Birds Site: “Ornithologists recognize five subspecies that differ mostly in size: eureka in Oregon and California; adianta from Washington to the central Aleutians; kaiurka in the west-central Aleutians and the Commander Islands; columba from the Bering Strait to the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. The subspecies of Pigeon Guillemot that inhabits the Kuril Islands of Japan, snowi, has little to no white in the upperwing, unlike other subspecies.” They are in the family with auks and murres and puffins, rather than ducks. How aukward, heh, heh. I am informed that they “are not good eating”. Too fishy.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: float. They are very good at floating and diving, and make a whirring sound as they fly. They have a high piping song.

The range map is cool: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pigeon_Guillemot/maps-range.

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louche lips sink ships

At Fort Worden, the lighthouse was open on Sunday! I went up. A kind docent took the photograph of me with my camera. The lighthouse has a Fresnel lens.

Here is the information on Fresnel Lenses:

And views from the top, towards the southwest:

View west:

I think the view DOWN was the scariest!

https://www.pointwilsonlighthouse.org/

You can visit too!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: louche!

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medicine

I was thinking of old medicine bottles for today’s prompt, but I think hiking is one of the most medicinal things I do. Healing. Freeing. Feeling the changes in the air, seeing the forests and the water here, being very present. Peaceful.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: medicinal.

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Sun tui

A photograph of a photograph. This is my father, Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway, sailing Sun Tui, our 1960s boat. A 23 foot sloop built in Hong Kong by American Marine. The tiller is a dragon with the world in it’s mouth and inside there is a carving of Kwan Yin.

My father died in 2013. I still have the boat. Needs some work, but hoping I can sail again soon.

I can’t credit the original photographer because I don’t know who it is. It might have been me.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sail.

A dragon with the world in her mouth.
Carving of Kwan Yin (or Guan Yin).
Sun Tui.

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colossal

The hills don’t look that colossal, do they? But this is taken zoomed in from the Olympic Peninsula and the hills are on Vancouver Island. Here is one not zoomed:

It was a colossally low tide and we were hunting fossils. Fossil clams, fossil snails and stories of fossil dinosaur bones.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: colossal.

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before the rain

I took this two days ago on an early beach walk starting at North Beach. The sky was amazing and beautiful. We had intermittent sun through the clouds and very little rain on that walk. It’s easier to see the clear agates when the sun lights them up.

I did not find any clear agates. B found one that met his criteria. There were many other beautiful rocks. This one was way too big to bring home. The rock itself is almost a rainbow.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rainbow.