I’ve seen bitterns catch a wide variety of animals, but even so I was caught by surprise when this one struck into the grass and emerged with a large earthworm. I knew some songbirds like robins ate worms but bitterns join egrets and kestrels as birds I was surprised to see hunting the wiggly worm.

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men’s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening.
Circe’s warning to Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey

I visit Ridgefield alone, intentionally alone, and have no men to lash me to the steering wheel that I might safely pass my Sirens, the bitterns that lurk at the edges of the marsh. Thus am I always compelled to stop, for seconds, minutes, even hours. A day may yet come when I have watched them enough, photographed them enough, that I can pass them by, but for now I am powerless to resist my Siren’s call.

I’m not a biologist, but if you’re a Townsend’s vole and find yourself in this situation, you’re not having a good day.

I thought the picture of the close-up of a bittern’s face would be my favorite bittern picture of the year, but a month and a half later I got my current favorite, this view of the varied patterns and colors of a bittern’s plumage. This is an evolution of an idea that I first got photographing the colors and textures and patterns of the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone, then evolved through trees in the Olympic rain forests and later the redwoods, then in birds in the great blue heron, turkey, and finally, finally the bittern.

I’ve been hoping for a picture like this for a long time. I had to crop heavily and don’t have quite as much depth of field as I’d like given the need for the fastest shutter speed in the low light to minimize motion blur from the moving bittern. Even with a big telephoto lens, and even with all that cropping, I had to be really close to get a picture like this. If you look into the bittern’s eye you can see a reflection of my favorite camera mount — our Subaru Outback.

When a bittern strikes at prey unseen I never know what it’s going to come up with, but often I can guess based on the location of the strike. When this bittern lunged out into the water, I guessed it would bring up a bullfrog, but I wasn’t expecting a tadpole! And such a large one! Fortunately for me it repeated the performance a moment later when I was better positioned for pictures. Despite their size the tadpoles were still relatively early in their development as they hadn’t yet started to grow legs.

Believe it or not, this is not the same bittern from the previous post. I took this picture 20 minutes later on the other side of the refuge between Horse and Long Lakes. I can’t say I haven’t seen bitterns in this spot before, and in fact I was actively looking for them here as several had been in the area on earlier visits.

The iPhone is one of the best devices I’ve ever owned. One little thing I love is the ability to set multiple repeating alarms. I have one for 7:00 a.m. on weekdays to get me up for work, and another for 5:00 a.m. on the weekends to get me up for Ridgefield. Another thing I love is the ability to carry around weather maps in my pocket. And oh how I loved the weather map on the morning of May 15th!

I love photographing wildlife in the rain (and snow and frost and fog) and the beauty of the auto tour is I can do it from the relative warmth of a dry car seat. Not everyone shares my love for the rain of course and I didn’t see another car on the refuge for the first couple of hours. It rained much of the day and traffic on the tour was fairly low despite being in the midst of spring migration.

I kept an eye on the weather maps during the day to try to be at a favorite location when the best weather (in this case, the heaviest rain) hit. Even so, I got caught out by a sudden downpour. I had just finished driving past the lakes and started onto the large meadows at the end of the tour where there isn’t much to see at this time of year. So I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw this bittern in the tall grass of the meadow near Schwartz Lake, where I’ve not seen bitterns before, the green grass nicely showing off the pouring rain.

I stayed all day from sunrise to sunset (assuming there was a sunrise and sunset), you’ll see a number of pictures in the coming days and weeks of the Ridgefield rain.

I’m both a night owl and a creature of habit and don’t do too well either early in the mornings or when my routine is disrupted. God help me when both occur at once.

Over the past couple of years I’ve gone to work a handful of times with my shirts on backwards. I usually wear long sleeve T’s and they don’t look too different wrong-way round — except those with pockets on the front. It was usually during the winter when I wear another shirt over it for warmth, so embarrassing but not publicly so.

One day I wore my shirt inside-out and didn’t discover my faux pas until the end of the day. I wore my shame to meetings and lunch in the cafeteria and all around the campus. My fellow engineers were too polite to point out that I shouldn’t be allowed to dress myself.

A month ago I missed my train stop on the way to work and didn’t catch my mistake for two whole stops. I didn’t fall asleep, nor was I so engrossed in editing pictures that I lost track of time and space, both of which have happened before. I just missed it. In my defense, even though I got off two stops too late, according to the signs and announcements on the train I got off two stops too early. But I know better than to trust them, even as I write this the train says Yellow Line when it actually is a Blue Line. The train was also unusually crowded so it was hard to see outside and notice the scenery, but even so I was rather chagrined at my mistake.

But the coup de grâce was yet to come. My wife woke me on a Friday morning to tell me she had to leave for work early and couldn’t give me a ride to the train station, so I’d either have to walk to the train or drive to work. Since I had an early meeting I decided to drive to make sure I got there on time.

At the end of the day I called my wife as I walked to catch the train home. Since she wasn’t in, I tried a couple of times on the ride home, reaching her as the train was nearly at my stop. At which point she wondered why I was on the train since I had driven that morning.

Oh corks!

I was too tired to loop back to get the car, but we needed both cars on Sunday, so after spending Saturday at Ridgefield I left early to get the car. I hated to leave, it was raining and I love Ridgefield in the rain, plus the birds were getting active, so I was kicking myself as I turned around to make my early exit.

But then I noticed a couple of bitterns in the tall grass. They are normally solitary creatures so they were probably courting, and probably successfully as I’ve seen them in close proximity a couple of times since then. One of the bitterns blessed me with a pose in the tall wet grass, a final picture before I had to leave to fix my latest bout of incompetence.

My latest but not my last.

Owls and hawks are important predators, as well as house cats, weasels, coyotes, foxes, skunks, snakes, and the great blue heron.
National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals description of the Townsend’s vole

Oh yes, and bitterns.

Pity the Townsend's vole, an important food source in the diet of a large variety of predators at Ridgefield

Although I failed in my quest to find a bittern in the frost on the last day of 2010, the first day of 2011 rewarded me with a bittern on the ice — a hunting bittern on the ice.

The day started out promising when I glimpsed a blacktail buck on the drive down through the canyon and onto the refuge at Ridgefield, but after putting on a show the day before the rest of the animals seemed to be sleeping in. While the early hours weren’t crowded, as the morning wore on the visitors picked up rapidly and the big lens attracted a small crowd whenever I stopped.

On the far side of the refuge, I like to drive slowly along Rest Lake to look for bitterns, so I pulled over to let an approaching car past so that I could move at my own pace. Even as I was pulling over I noticed this bittern down below in the frozen channel and settled in to watch. Within moments the bittern struck into the grass and brought out this terrified vole.

Bitterns often like to dunk their prey in the water and so it gingerly stepped down the rim of ice, struggling not to slip, and then dunked the vole into the water. Or tried to at least, but failed, since the water in this section was still frozen. It seemed mystified for a moment and stood motionless before eating its meal undunked.

After taking a few environmental portraits of the bittern on the ice, I moved ahead just slightly to another nice location and waited for the bittern to come past. But a Land Rover came up behind me and the couple got out of their car (a no-no on the auto tour during the winter) to set up their scope to view the distant ducks and swans.

Not surprisingly I didn’t see the bittern again.

When I got to the end of the auto tour, I was going to go around again but my heart sank when I saw a nearly solid line of cars between Horse and South Quigley Lakes. I learned my lesson from Christmas day, when I should have left when it got over-crowded but didn’t, and headed home.

Ellie got an extra walk and playtime in the park, and extra hedgehogging as well, so all-in-all a fantastic start to the year for everyone but the vole.

Neither bittern nor vole was happy with the outcome of this dunk attempt, but the vole got the worst of it

The end of 2009 brought a surprise snowstorm followed by cold rains. If you’re a hungry predator, you can’t wait out the bad weather if you want to eat. Two bitterns were working the edge of South Quigley Lake, there was one a few feet below me that was actively stalking the shoreline (you’ve seen its handiwork catching voles in other posts), while this one further up the road stayed fairly still and seemed more interested in opportunistic meals.

I could photograph you all day! And as you might have noticed by now, sometimes I do. Just can’t get enough of all their wonderful poses.

Sorry little bittern, I don’t make the rules!

As a younger man I might have spent New Year’s Day watching football for eight hours, but in 2010 I kicked off the new year at Ridgefield with eight hours of watching bitterns. I did venture around to other parts of the auto tour but spent most of the day sitting still at South Quigley Lake with the bitterns. I love photographing in the rain and was fortunate enough to get this straight-on portrait of one bittern before a quick shake sent the drops on its head flying. It paid me little heed as it hunted for voles and salamanders a few feet below me as it wandered up and down the shoreline and in and out of the marsh.

I had the lens aperture set to f/16 to keep as much sharpness as I could from the beak back to the eyes and water drops. Thanks to the low light, small aperture, and extension tubes for close focus, even at ISO 3200 my shutter speed was a woeful 1/25th of a second, even with image stabilization and a beanbag for support I didn’t have high hopes I’d get a good image with such a long telephoto lens.

This time I got lucky.

From what I’ve seen, bitterns are one of a small number of birds that could play in the NBA based on their propensity to dunk. I’ve seen them catch voles and salamanders and snakes and frogs and, if possible, all of them get quick dunks into the pond while the bittern applies constant pressure with its large beak. It’s much too fast to be an attempt to drown the creature, it really is just a quick splash in the water, but I’m not sure what purpose it serves. This Townsend’s vole is coming up from a dunking and as I recall, got at least one more before it finally stopped wiggling and the bittern swallowed it whole.

I have seen bitterns hold snakes under the water for an extended period of time, gripping them with their bare feet, and that may have been an attempt to drown the snake, get it so cold that it would move slowly, or just keep the bitey-bits away from sensitive areas until pressure killed it.

I’ve loved salamanders ever since I was a kid, whenever we hiked near a stream I’d search under the rocks for these beautiful little creatures. While I’ve seen newts here in the Northwest, salamanders have always eluded me. Nearly always, that is. I have seen them a few times, for brief seconds between when a wading bird plucks them from their hiding spot and swallows them whole.

Here’s hoping one day we meet under happier circumstances.

Over the Christmas break, I photographed bitterns more than any other animal. Each opportunity offered something unique, such as photographing them hunting voles, fish, frogs, and salamanders. Or in the sun and snow and rain. Or shooting with a wide angle lens for an environmental portrait or zoomed in with a telephoto lens to highlight their faces, feet, and in this case, the beautiful pattern of the feathers on their chest.

One of the stories at Ridgefield this winter has been the American bitterns which have been putting on a show at several spots around the auto tour during many of my visits. I’m always on the lookout for bitterns so I’m not sure why I’ve had so much success watching them hunt lately, although it may have something to do with the fact that I spent far more time at the refuge over the Christmas break than I usually do.

This bittern was mostly snagging small fish as it worked the channel beside Rest Lake, but at one point it stopped and started wiggling its neck side to side and then struck into the middle of the channel, bringing up this bullfrog. Bullfrogs themselves are voracious predators and, since they aren’t native to the Northwest, have combined with habitat loss to cause some problems for some of our natives. This little bittern was doing its part to turn the tables and win one for the home team.

One day on the auto tour at Ridgefield, a car ahead of me had stopped in the middle of the road leaving no room to get by on either side. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I pulled over and stopped a long ways back from them so they’d know to take their time watching whatever it was they were watching. There wasn’t anything to photograph from my vantage point but I was enjoying the symphony of the swans on Rest Lake when I heard a rustling from the grasses not far below the car.

I expected a nutria but was surprised to find this bittern instead. At first I had a good view but as it hunted the narrow channel, it soon disappeared from sight and the grasses rarely allowed a view below. So I drove a short way until I found a better spot and settled in to wait and hoped the bittern would walk that far. My patience was rewarded when the hunting bittern at last came back into view. After playing around with views of the bittern half-hidden by the grasses, it stepped to the right and gave me a clear view of its head and beak.

One of the things I love about the auto tour at Ridgefield is a chance to watch animals in their natural environment at close range without disrupting them, you get to see things you’d never see on the trails. I had a chance to watch this bittern over the course of a couple days around Christmas of 2009. The first day it made several strikes into the grasses at the edge of South Quigley Lake but came up empty each time. The next morning, however, I was startled when it came up with a Townsend’s vole. So startled that I barely managed a picture. I had no idea they would go after prey that large and figured that would be its last meal of the day.

So I was even more surprised when it struck a second time and caught another vole, as soon as I saw it strike I heard the vole shrieking and was better prepared for pictures. The bittern still wasn’t satisfied, it caught a large salamander a while later and only then decided to slip back under the cover of the marsh. The cattails grow so thickly here that with a few steps it was gone from sight.