Thursday's postcard, plus wings and streams

June 6, 2024

The Hawk Creek gorge north of Creston, WA

It was a half century ago that Olympus came out with the OM-2 single lens reflex camera. This worked out well for me because my dad—a camera buff since his Army days—just had to have it and I was suddenly handed his OM-1. It also instigated our father-son field trips, with cameras, always looking for wildlife and especially birds. Our cramped house (6 kids) was about a mile from a mangrove estuary on the margin of the Panama Canal, so we’d often go there to photograph egrets.

This was quality father-son time, bonding in the muck. A favorite memory is from a morning when we were deep in the swamp during a retreating tide. As we made our way we found ourselves leaping across small streams as we progressed from one finger of mud to another. At one edge we looked up to see a large crocodile about twenty yards away. It was still on the bank .We studied it, and after a minute or two reasoned it had expired and gone to crocodile heaven. So we leapt across. This had the effect of disproving our theory about the croc no longer being of this world. We glanced at each other with the widest of eyes and then quickly hurtled back across to the other bank. From there we hustled to higher ground, all the while laughing in the way that people laugh when overdosing on adrenaline.

What can I say? I miss our adventures. Thanks pop.

Bald eagle at the “Thoroughfare” a slough connecting Priest Lake with Upper Priest Lake.

Male Hooded Merganser in a mid-winter flight

Great blue heron, with lunch in bill

Male Ruddy Duck in vernal wetlands, eastern Lincoln County

Merganser mom with her brood in lower Latah Creek

American Dipper, Wallace Falls State Park, Snohomish County

Soaring osprey at the confluence of the Spokane River and Latah Creek

Black-necked Stilt in a vernal marsh in northern Adams County

American White Pelicans, at Clear Lake west of Spokane

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