Tag Archives: Kiwa Trail

Howling

A coyote howls at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

As I pulled up to the observation blind at Ridgefield, I noticed this coyote standing a little farther up the road. It wasn’t in a very photogenic location, so I got out of the car and just watched it instead of trying for pictures. Eventually it sauntered up the road, occasionally turning back to watch me, before disappearing around the bend. I continued up the short trail to the blind and didn’t expect to see it again, but after returning to the car we met once more at the parking lot to the Kiwa Trail. I drove to the far side of the lot to get better light then gently swung the car into place so as not to disturb the coyote. After searching around in the meadow, it howled a few times, unanswered, then slipped through the gate across the trailhead and disappeared up the trail.

I’ve heard coyotes howl many times but this remains the only time I’ve seen it. While I took a number of pictures, this was the only one where its head wasn’t turned away from me.

This is another picture I edited after sorting through some old images, it was taken in April of 2006. I’ve had another image from the series online before, in that one the coyote’s head was raised further up in mid-howl, but in retrospect I like this one better where its head is turned into the light.

On the Trail of the Boolie

A GPS map of the auto tour and Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

My wife recently picked up car chargers for our iPhones so last weekend I used the MotionX-GPS app on the iPhone to record GPS data of my movements during a day at Ridgefield. This takes a hard toll on the battery, and since I was there for 13 hours I couldn’t have pulled it off without the charger.

What I want is to merge the data with my pictures so that I can get a visual map of where I took my pictures, an idea I first had many years ago during visits to both Ridgefield and Yellowstone. The pieces are all falling into place now although I haven’t yet learned how to tie it all together. Next I need to learn how to merge the GPS data with the pictures, then I can use Apple’s Aperture to display the locations for each picture on a map.

The picture above is the GPS data overlaid on a satellite image of Ridgefield and shows how I spent 13 hours on June 19, 2011. I’ve annotated it with the names of lakes and marshes at Ridgefield. I’m not exactly sure where Bower Slough starts and ends as there is a series of dikes and canals, but this is my best guess. Google Maps only labeled one lake and they got it wrong, they have Long Lake incorrectly named as Quigley Lake.

At first I was a little confused by the satellite photo as there didn’t appear to be much water visible, but this would make sense if the picture was snapped during the summer. Many of the lakes are seasonal and even during the spring the shallower lakes fill with vegetation.

The GPS trace shows two main loops with the green and red dots showing where I started and stopped the recording. The larger loop on the right is the auto tour where I spend so much of my free time, the smaller loop on the left is the Kiwa Trail, a short hiking trail that opens up during the summer. Traffic flows counter-clockwise around the auto tour, most of it is one-way but the first stretch does allow for two-way traffic.

Many of the lakes to my eye are really ponds, or even large puddles, but what does it matter? Some of my favorite places to sit and watch are some of the smallest lakes. Some like South Quigley Lake and Rest Lake were favorite spots from my very first visit, while others like Horse Lake and Long Lake took me a while to learn their rhythms and charms and only recently have become favorites.

Pond of Many Colors


A western painted turtle pokes its head out of green-colored water near the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A western painted turtle pokes its head out of the water

I’m back, baby, I’m back!

It’s been quiet the past month but hopefully that is about to change.

There were several themes running through May, starting with the rainy weather that allowed me to photograph at Ridgefield from when the gates opened to when they closed. All told I think I spent 63 hours in May at the refuge, keeping my spirits up despite long hours at work.

May is also a great time for watching birds as they court and nest and raise their young, and also to see birds that are migrating through and too soon pass on. I spent several thirteen and fourteen hour days at the refuge, much of it on foot, savoring each encounter as next time my subjects might be gone.

All of that time also highlighted some equipment problems, either outright failures like my teleconverter or issues like my tripod and ballhead, which aren’t up to the challenge of carrying the big lens for that many hours. I bought it to be my hiking tripod where it only needs to support my lighter lenses, or to handle the big lens in a pinch, but with that many hours with the big lens it just wasn’t up to the task.

I got to see many of my favorite species, such as this western painted turtle poking its head out of its pond of many colors near the Kiwa Trail. Painted turtles are one of only two freshwater turtles native to Washington, the other is the pond turtle which is so rare you’re unlikely ever to see one. The painted turtles seem to be doing fine, at least at Ridgefield, where on a sunny spring day I’ve seen a few dozen just along the auto tour.

There are lots more pictures from May to come, including some new species that haven’t been on my site before. There are a few house wren pictures, a pileated woodpecker, a male western tanager, several black-headed grosbeaks (male and female), at least a couple of great horned owl fledglings, and a white-breasted nuthatch bringing bugs to the nest.

Lots of updates to existing galleries too, most notably tree swallows, with both close-ups and environmental portraits. Also hungry cedar waxwings, a female yellowthroat, a red-winged fledgling, a couple of starling fledglings, the elusive sora, and a male ruddy duck resplendent in breeding plumage. Possibly a cormorant, white-crowned sparrow, kestrel, and cinnamon teal, I’ll have to see how they turned out.

And let’s not forget the mammals, including a new mink picture, several muskrats, a black-tailed doe, a nutria, and several new eastern cottontails. Also a Townsend’s mole, a new species for me, it was dead but the picture isn’t macabre.

And perhaps my favorite encounter of the month, a swarm of bees on a tree, I found them early in the morning when they were quiet and I could safely photograph the patterns of the colony.

I’m also going to put up a post of the pictures that got away, starting with a full-frame shot of a long-tailed weasel that is heartbreakingly out-of-focus. And there are still pictures from the winter I need to sort and edit, particularly of bitterns.

Stay tuned!