Tag Archives: American bittern

Well Fed

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An American bittern grabs a bullfrog tadpole from the water

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.

Sometimes I Think Somebody Up There Likes Me

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An American bittern stands upright in the pouring rain at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

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 Wonderful Wet

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A radar map of rain over the Pacific Northwest

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.

An American bittern stands upright in the pouring rain at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

Boolie the Incompetent

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An American bittern stands in tall grass at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

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.