Monthly Archives: September 2009

Cone Free

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Our dog Ellie plays outside her favorite toy, a baby hedgehog from Plush Puppies

After a week of house rest Ellie is doing much better. She’s finished her meds, the plastic cone has come off, and she resumed her walks a couple of days ago. The vet wants us to hold off a bit on allowing her to run or play rough, which means hedgehog time has been curtailed except for times like these when she lays on her back and waits for me to wrestle it from her mouth (these pictures are from before she hurt her leg).

Ellie is very anxious to be active again. While I was watching football the other day and working on my laptop, somehow baby hedgehog kept landing on my keyboard. I’d look over at Ellie and she had a look that said “I don’t know how that got that there, but since it is, let’s play!”. I’d get her to lay down with it, but a short while later hedgehog was back on my keyboard. The battle went on and on until I eventually put hedgehog in the closet.

Soon, Ellie, soon.

Our dog Ellie plays outside her favorite toy, a baby hedgehog from Plush Puppies

Canon EOS 20D 2005-2009

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A close-up view of a hoary marmot on the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park

I spent all day Saturday hiking around Mount Rainier with some good friends. The Northwest was blessed with warm days and clear blue skies this weekend, but Rainier is large enough to create her own weather, so we actually had clouds all day and never got to see the mountain. Which was fine, we had good company and a good trail and the hoary marmots were out in force to keep us entertained. The clouds provided nice soft lighting so normally I would have photographed the marmots throughout the day.

Normally I would have, but unfortunately my camera died early in the hike. We stopped for lunch near a marmot that was fattening itself on the mountain meadow grasses when my Canon 20D threw up the dreaded Err 99 error message and then the shutter started firing continuously. Even with the camera turned off. A sure sign that the shutter had given up the ghost and my camera was done for. And even more unfortunately, I only brought one camera to save weight, so my lenses were dead weight for the rest of the day.

This hoary marmot was not the one I was photographing at the end, but rather one from a colony we observed earlier in the morning. We were watching a handful of marmots in the distance when this one came waddling down the path, posed for a picture, then ran down the hillside and off into the distance.

The 20D has been by far my favorite camera. It’s been my main camera through four and half years and thousands of exposures. I took it all over the place: Yellowstone, the Tetons, the Redwoods, Mount Rainier, the Olympics, the Oregon coast, the Columbia River Gorge, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, and even Tokyo. And of course Ridgefield. So, so many times to Ridgefield.

It survived my smashing it on the mountain. It photographed Sam and Emma and Ellie when we welcomed them to our home, as well as the nieces and nephews we welcomed into our lives. It photographed my stepfather and my grandmother and Templeton before they passed away. The picture of my stepfather brings tears to my eyes and a smile to my face when I look at it still.

Technology had passed it by, but my 20D was a great camera and captured many great memories.

Two Techniques

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A female red-winged blackbird hunts for insect larvae at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A female red-winged blackbird hunts for insect larvae at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

This female redwing was hunting for insect larvae in the shallows of Long Lake at Ridgefield. A song sparrow was also working this area but each bird had a different approach. The blackbird would pry with her beak looking for meals to take back to her nest, while the smaller sparrow would kick with its legs to uncover its prey.

Two techniques, both quite successful.

A song sparrow with an insect larvae in its mouth at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A song sparrow with an insect larvae in its mouth at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

California

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A California ground squirrel at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

We didn’t have ground squirrels where I grew up in the east, so when we moved west I was delighted to find them, such as this one near the auto tour at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in California. While I enjoyed my visit to the refuge back in 2003, I had to cancel the rest of my trip as an unexpected snowstorm trapped me in Redding for a couple of days, then I just made it home to Portland before an ice storm trapped me there.

California ground squirrels are also native to Oregon, and in fact there are some that live on the campus where I work, but unfortunately I rarely get to see them in the places that I hike the most.