Monthly Archives: June 2016

Waiting Game

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The eagles play a waiting game on the Fish Creek Delta. They wait perched on spruce limbs where they could spot the arrival of food or a rival. They wait for the tide to recede. They long for the day king salmon enter the creek. The delta crows also wait for low tide and the salmon. But I can hear their young calling out for their mid-morning feed. The adults must long for the day their hatchlings fledge.

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The impatient Aki rushes down a trail lined with blooming wild roses and cow parsnips. She has many scents to sample and cover with pee. The little dog doesn’t notice a formation of barn swallows dive on out matched mosquitoes. I feel like Aki and I are heavy bombers being escorted over enemy territory.

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Perhaps because it landed so near a nest or because the crow is tired of the waiting game, it flies into an immature bald eagle to force it off it perch. The larger bird screeches out a warning but doesn’t move. In seconds the crow takes up station just above the eagle and lets out a string of sounds that could be curses. The eagle looks up at the diminutive crow, cocks its head, confused, rather than angry. Below, the swallows, their waiting game over, hunt prey.

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Muting the Robin’s Song

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The eagles are testy today. During an early morning hunt for king salmon at Tee Harbor the captain and I watched two mature bald eagles throw down over a baitfish. One hovered ten feet about the water. Using the strong north wind, it gently lowered its talons onto a herring. Getting only its tail feathers wet, it rose up with the fish and headed toward the beach. Another eagle snatched for the fish. The two birds locked talons and twirled in a ball just above the harbor waters. Whether because of centrifugal force or a loss of nerve, the attacker released and fell backwards into the water. I was about to suggest that we motor over and lift its stunned body out of danger with the net when it stirred. By slapping its wings onto the water it managed to lift itself into the air.

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Now Aki and I walk through a soaked forest to the beach. Weak storm light hits the early-summer growth on the understory plants. The illuminated green growth sparkles with beaded rainwater. Robin and thrush songs further brighten the mood until an eagle gives out a shrill lament. Aki, who has gained a sensible caution around the bid birds, moves next to me the trail. The first line of a poem someone should write pops into my head: Grief mutes the robin’s song.

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Raven Cabal

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I sense tension in the raven community. Aki picks up on it. On Gastineau Avenue, they burst from beneath a salmon berry patch when we approach. One appears to act as a lookout from a perch that provides an unobstructed view of the MV Zaandam’s bow ropes. Ripe salmon berries, some red, others a milky orange distract me away from the ravens. But, like the ravens’ moods, they are sour.

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The little dog and I descend the Ewing Way steps to Lower Franklin Street and then walk past Tracy’s Crab Shack to the cruise ship dock. The disembodied voice of the Zaandam’s cruise ship director lets his passengers know that it is now safe to disembark. Early risers waddle down the Zaandam’s gangplank, pose for a picture with a crewman dressed as an eagle, and move into a swarm of land-tour hawkers. Aki powers past the false eagle and toward a gang of ravens shredding the ropes that secure the Zaandam to the dock. One, apparently the local lookout, watches us pass. Aki doesn’t even bark.

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Gathering Moss

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On wet days like this, when the wind whips up waves on the channel and the trees of Treadwell drip steady on the little dog and I, the forest seem to be eating the ruins of the old mining town. Water glistening on an old iron rail directs attention to the way it curves and then dives into a live spruce tree. Rain soaked moss fills the crevices of vents and covers concrete walls. Better keep moving little poodle-mix, before the woods claim you.

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