Every Dog Has Her Day

"No fair," we kids occasionally insisted when the calendar showed that Mother's Day or Father's Day was next on the holiday roll. "Why isn't there a Children's Day?"

My mom always wisely responded with the answer they must give out to all moms in the obstetric ward in a top-secret parenting bible, because all moms give the same answer to this demand: "Because every day is Children's Day."

I'm still not so sure about that, but I do know that for canines living in prosperous, pet-loving nations, just about every day is indeed Dog's Day. And a camping vacation has got to be the gravy on the kibble. Our lovely Labrador Luna definitely enjoyed her time camping on Lopez Island and Orcas Island.

My daughter decided that if Luna could write and send postcards (she could at least do a fab job licking the stamps), they would all say, "Having a great time. Ate part of a dead fish. Licked ants off my backside. Wish you were here."

"Shhh. Be vewwy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits."

"Pause: We are now entering the Hall of Squirrels."

If Luna had Jedi powers, the intensity of her squirrel-fixing gaze would surely
airlift the rodents from their treetop abodes right into her jaws.

Luna's a pretty clean dog at home, so she got to indulge in being a dirty one on
vacation. Came home with a coat packed with sand and dust and stippled with
patches of Douglas-fir resin and marshmallow.

Good dog that she is, Luna takes care to read the Rules for Dogs before
entering the grounds at the Lopez Farmer's Market.

And there's always time for a good book.

Plenty of Seals but Nary a Shark

If you visit Shark Reef Sanctuary on Lopez Island, you will not see a single shark. This small haven of rugged cliffs, tidepools, and tall trees is named after offshore rocks that, in the words of The Dog-Lover's Companion to the Pacific Northwest, are "as chiseled as a shark's teeth."

But you will see harbor seals. The seals haul out onto the rocks when the tide is low to bask in the sun (or at least to relax in a slightly warmer place than the water, on a gray day). You'll need binoculars to see them as the rocks are not snuggled up against the shore.

They lie in groups of three or so, looking like downed blimps as they doze. Sometimes they curl their bodies into a C shape with tail and head pointing up. Their gray-brown pelts are mottled with spots, so people have sometimes dubbed them leopard seals--though they're nothing like the ferocious penguin-eaters of that name in Antarctica.

You can tell if a seal has been in your house because you'll find that all the fish in your freezer has been looted, every can of tuna fish opened and cleaned out, and even the Goldfish crackers may be gone (and don't even bother to look inside your aquarium if you have...er, had...pet fish). Because harbor seals eat fish, fish, and more fish. When the tide rises, all these seal-sausages will slide off the grilling rocks and back in the sea to hunt.

Males are bigger than females, and pups grow fast, so I don't know if we saw any young seals in this bunch. A fascinating pinniped fact is that harbor-seal pups shed the lanugo--the baby coat of soft, fluffy fur--before they are born, with the exception of harbor seals born farther north in Arctic regions, which retain theirs for a while after birth.

A few years ago, while camping along the Oregon coast, we did come across a harbor-seal pup on the shore. Seal cows typically leave their pups on shore to rest while they're off hunting fish; likewise, weaned pups haul out on beaches to warm up and relax. So a pup on its own is not necessarily an abandoned pup.

Needless to say, the pups are very vulnerable in this situation, both to predation by animals such as eagles and harassment, injury, or death caused by humans and unleashed dogs. Even kind-hearted people can do them harm. One local woman put a seal pup in her bathtub, filled it with tap water, and tossed in clams; the pup, which hadn't yet been weaned, died. A luckier pup was the one unwittingly "rescued" by a young couple on vacation, who picked it up and kept in their hotel room overnight; that one was rehabbed by PAWS of Lynnwood and later set free. Hence, organizations such as Seal Sitters have sprung up to keep an eye on pups in this situation.

It's those soulful eyes at work. When you focus the binoculars and train them on the seals offshore, you often find that those seemingly oblivious creatures are looking back, calmly taking in all the activity back on land.

Birds, San Juan Islands, sizes XS to XL

Washington State's oceanic shorelines are a wonderland for birders. There's your ocean, for starters. Then there are all the levels of the shoreline and variations thereof: rocky, muddy, gravelly, sandy. Take a few more steps east, and you're deep in a forest--anything from a mix of conifers and red alders to ancient temperate rainforest. This variety of habitat makes the shorelines a wonderland for the birds themselves, too.

Vacationing in the San Juan islands these past two weeks, up north near Canada's own islands, thus meant lots of bird sightings. I managed to get a few photos--forgive the resolution, my camera's just a little Panasonic Lumix, so once I get past the optical zoom's limits and it goes to digital zoom, the crispness is gone.  Still, they bring me back, with exquisite clarity, to the moment I saw these wild creatures.

I'll start with the XL birds:

Bald eagle, sighted over cove along Lopez Village, Lopez Island. I've seen hundreds of bald eagles since moving to Washington
State 20-odd years ago, but every time I see one it is still a thrill. This fellow looks as if he flew straight out of central casting.

Great Blue Heron, southern shore of Cascade Lake, Orcas Island. These guys sound positively
Jurassic when they take to the air on their massive wings and rasp out loud, croaking calls. They
fold their necks in flight so that the head appears to be resting on the back, instead of sticking their
necks out in front as cranes do.



Double-crested cormorant parent and chick, Anacortes ferry dock. This image doesn't
show the bird's slinky, snaky neck, but it does show the colorful sheen that you don't
usually see in the black feathers when the birds are just flying by as black silhouettes,
which is how I usually see them. I was charmed that my daughter's friend, who was

along on our trip, thought that the cables and spikes throughout the pilings and pillars

were put there to help keep the cormorants' nests and chicks from falling out, whereas

I imagined they were there to prevent nesting in the first place.



These barn swallows are having a conference on Turtleback Mountain near a stable we visited. At our campsite by Cascade Lake,
we were treated to aerial displays over the water morning and night as violet-green swallows swooped low over the mirrorlike
surface to snare insects. At dusk, the swallows clocked out for the night, and bats flickered in to take their place skimming
across the lake.

Song sparrows trooped regularly through our campsite and
fearlessly trotted across the table to retrieve fallen grains of oatmeal.
Many of them looked terribly tatty, with adults apparently molting
and fledglings trading up to more adult plumage. This little guy
even lacked a tail. I thought this was due to a narrow escape from

a predator, but I later found online images of young song sparrows

growing in their tail feathers, so I guess this is a common sight.

I was thrilled to spy a brown creeper, a cryptically colored bird as invisible on a tree as a

sole on a sandy seabed. I only noticed him because it was very quiet and I could hear his

little claws scratching on the bark as he hitched his way up a branch. Creepers are great

examples of niche-filling in nature--they go UP tree trunks, searching for bugs under bark,

while the red-breasted nuthatches (which we heard calling "yank, yank" in nasal tones

all day long) travel DOWN the trunk. Either way, hidden arthropods are doomed.

The tiny, mouselike winter wren (now called a Pacific wren, sadly) is more often
seen than heard--and the song produced by this little waif is an amazing torrent of
liquid notes; it's like turning on an ordinary kitchen faucet and having the Columbia
River pour out of it. Only without the plumber bills. An excellent bird.

Smallest of all were the rufous (at least I am 99 percent sure they were rufous)
hummingbirds that patrolled the flower-filled garden of the cottage we stayed in
at the start of our vacation. They spent all day probing and feeding at flowers,
interspersing these activities to conduct dogfights and chases to prevent each other
from gaining access to said flowers. I'd be sitting and reading, enjoying a cup of
coffee, and meanwhile furious "chips" and "squeaks" and menacing buzzing of wings
filled the air around me as the hummers waged their ceaseless border disputes. Best of
all, though, I got to see a hummer take a bath in a gigantic, 3-level garden fountain.
Very cute. These little birds pack a lion's bravery--I got too close to one with my nosy
camera, and it buzzed me, then hovered a foot in front of my face with what looked
like a very angry glare on its face, starting me down for 10 seconds before huffing off.

Can I Please Go Back on Vacation Now?

Two lovely weeks spent up in the San Juan islands hidden in a cozy cottage and then camping by a lake explain lack of blogging and failure to tend to other responsibilities.

Cascade Lake, Moran State Park, Orcas Island, viewed from South End Campground