Clever Marmot

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Clever Marmot

Nature/wildlife photography by Mara Patton and Dave Hendler

10/21/2022

Gosh it’s been quiet around here! Turns out we’ve been busy with our own little bit of wildlife. Beatrix is the light of our lives, and a pretty great photography subject, although we did realize we didn’t have a single non-telephoto lens after we had her 😂. I’m finally able to find time to sit back down at the computer and process photos, so maybe we’ll get this thing back up and running one of these days.

02/03/2022

Some terrible quality cell phone shots, but they still count! Had a wonderful time out at the recent extra low tides that happen at night this time of year. We brought our UV flashlights and had so much fun seeing all the usual creatures transformed in front of our eyes. It’s amazing the life and nuance hiding right in front of you that you can’t easily see in normal light.
Present are various anemones, something with too many legs, a hermit crab, and an itty bitty one centimeter large baby sea star. In one pic are snails and their eggs and a sea cucumber which is normally a rusty orange under natural light, but which really lives up to its namesake in this context.

11/07/2021

While on a quick trip to Yellowstone, we had several lovely encounters with Great Grey Owls (thank you & !). They are huge birds, and the few we saw gave us the gift of being able to observe them for quite some time without our interrupting any of their behavior.

In the last pic you can see the little points on the tips of the tail feathers which indicates that this is a young owl. This was evident in watching its attempts at mousing…

08/16/2021

It’s salmon time at the Ballard Locks! The harbor seals know a good thing when they see it. Seal School is also in session - this summer’s babies are growing up and require hunting instruction. Parent seals will grab a salmon, give it a good crunch to take some of the zip out of it and patiently let kiddo chase it around.

04/04/2021

I had just scared a poor little muskrat, and was watching to see where it would re-emerge. When I finally lost my patience, I turned around and found this much more interesting subject matter just 30 feet behind us, crunching away on this very decapitated bullhead’s head. He smacked and crunched and horked and gobbled it for quite some time, eventually swimming off with it to his den among the reeds.

@ Juanita Bay Park

02/06/2021

We saw these mountain goats a few years ago up at hurricane ridge in Olympic national park. Mountain goats are considered invasive in the olympics - they were brought in for sport hunting 100 years ago, but are native in the cascades. In the last few years work has been done to eradicate the population living in the olympics largely by relocating as many as they can to the cascades. So we will not meet these again in this spot. That’s best for both humans and goats, but it was a lovely moment to have had.

@ Olympic National Park

02/05/2021

There was a bat flying around in the late afternoon light yesterday, skimming over the water again and again catching bugs and taking a drink. These are way far cropped in, but it was a fun moment to capture!

02/04/2021

A few summers ago, we had this little hummingbird set up its nest in a tree directly outside our window. We watched it sit and sit and sit and sit, sadly it didn’t appear to successfully hatch a chick, but we enjoyed the daily hummingbird show while it lasted! Given the location of the nest and our windows, we always had to shoot through window glass. Didn’t get many very clear photos, this is the best of a bad lot, but I treasure it!

02/01/2021

I can’t decide if I like this photo. Should the eye be clearer and less obscured? The foreground bokeh is distracting. But the shot catches my eye when I scroll past it. I like the soft pastels, and it reminds me of the beautiful warm sunlit evening we captured it.

01/30/2021

Some little blue-striped garter snake friends we met...some unfathomable amount of time ago when life was still normal. There was a little family of them, all peeking out from their burrows next to the sidewalk. I love reptiles but do not have a fantastic track record of spotting them, so even friendly little common snakes are a joy!

@ Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge

01/29/2021

A lot of people are missing mom hugs right now, I sure am. This little new ball of fluff was getting groomed by mom. This adds air to their fur, giving them extra buoyancy so they float while mom gets a snack. Mom will wrap the kiddo up in some kelp to keep it from drifting away. Saw these in Monterey bay a few years ago.

@ Monterey Bay, CA

01/27/2021

You can find Black-crowned Night Herons in many, many places, but we most often run into them in Hawaii. We love watching them be monsters to the koi at resort ponds, using flood lights on the beach to hunt at night, and generally strutting around and looking absurd by the dozen in wetlands. We have a soft spot for them, and these photos remind me of being warm and windblown at the golden hour in some of my favorite places. @ Kealia Costal Boardwalk

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