Boolie’s Blog

This will be my swan (goose) song as I call it a night. The swan goose is not a native to the States and this may even be a domestic version of its wild counterpart, I don’t know much about this species. It probably escaped from its original home somewhere in the area and settled in at the Rhododendron Garden, which has a mix of wild (but fairly tame) ducks and geese as well as some domestic ducks and no shortage of cracked corn being tossed about by children.

This goose was tilting its head back to drink, or maybe it thought it was better than me, it’s hard to be sure about these things.

I promise I won’t post non-stop coot pictures (I can stop anytime I want!) so this will be the last for the night, it had surfaced with a little bit of plant life, some of which is still hanging out of its beak.

I’m not above jumping on a bandwagon, so this blog is going green! For one picture at least, not every picture I took of the coots at the Rhododendron Garden had to be full of fall color.

This coot was drinking as it swam but didn’t tilt its head up like I’ve seen some ducks and geese do, I wonder if coots can swallow without relying so heavily on gravity. I tried a search for drinking coots but just got a bunch of links to drunk old men, so for now the mystery will have to live on …

These pictures of a swimming American coot were taken close together both in space and in time. During the three seconds between the pictures, the coot had swum out of a shaded area of the pond into a sunny spot. The reflection in the water was different too, in the second picture it’s nearly all the reflection of one tree, in the first it’s a mix of several trees.

I took these pictures this past weekend, the first time I had been out to take pictures since coming home from my Washington trip a couple of months ago. I was hoping there would still be a little fall color left at Portland’s Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden and wasn’t disappointed. I chose a spot that both gave me some nice color in the water and also some nice ripples in the water. The ripples come from a large fountain in the pond, unfortunately they break up the reflection of the birds but I do like the patterns they make in the water if you catch them just right.

… you injure yourself while you sleep.

Saturday morning I woke up with a stinger in my left shoulder and couldn’t lift my arm above my head without pain. I stretched it out while watching football and unfortunately by the afternoon I was able to go out and rake up the fallen leaves.

Still, as long as I can get out and hike to watch wildlife like this hoary marmot, I can’t complain too much about getting older. I spent a few hours watching this marmot and its partner and the two pika that shared their talus field in Mount Rainier National Park. There was some red foliage further down so I leaned over to get both the red and green background.