September, 2024
Oh those elk, just when you think you know where they are, how they act, what their plans are, they change! Rather like humans, eh? 🙂
After the elk left the campground the other day, and I didn’t see them the next day, I figured they had left and headed back up into the hills. So this morning I didn’t wait for them to show up, instead I walked through the Dosewallips State Park, exploring various areas (A, B, C on that other map in that other blog post). Then this afternoon I visited the Quilcene Fish Hatchery. When I got back to my campsite in the Dosewallips campground, it was such a lovely late afternoon that I decided to simply take a walk from my campsite, walk across highway 101, and over to the campgrounds and picnic areas still inside this state park but on the Hood Canal side of highway 101. Here’s a map.
The RED dot is my campsite. The GREEN line is the route I walked from my campsite, across highway 101, and then down into the state park area east of 101 and next to Hood Canal. That walk took me all of about five minutes. 🙂
Walking across highway 101 was easy. This late in the day there’s almost no traffic.
I thought it might be lovely and peaceful to watch the sky and the water of Hood Canal on this early evening here, maybe chat with anyone else who was over there (there was only one other person and we didn’t chat). Oh, but it was beautiful there.
The sky was stunning … with both fluffy white clouds and dark grey clouds. There was a very slight breeze, just enough, with the temperature in the mid 70’s. There was no noise except for bird calls and such. It was so pretty and so relaxing.
I walked towards the water of Hood Canal, but saw a woman already standing out there so I stopped and waited, respectful of her space and her thoughts.
But at one point she leaned WAY forward and a little to the side, like she was seeing something but couldn’t quite make it out. Do you see it? Right in the middle of the grasses out there … the top of a head and two large ears. Guess who!
I was still waiting, back in the parking lot, and soon enough that woman did walk on following another path. So I then headed over to where she had been standing, just past the picnic table in the photo below.
Just past that picnic table is a stream of water that is one of the arms of the Dosey that flows into Hood Canal. There’s no way for humans to cross it and stay dry. 🙂
But the elk cross it! They don’t mind getting their legs wet. If you click on the photos above, and even enlarge them a tiny bit, you will see the elk lying in the grass.
I got as close to that stream as I dared and zoomed in with my camera. In the photo above, there’s Henry, on the right side of the herd, with his rack of antlers and I bet Clarice is right there too. I counted 24 elk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were asleep so their heads didn’t show so I didn’t get an accurate count. (Always “left click” on a photo to enlarge the photo if you’d like.)
Here’s a better close-up below.
So the elk had NOT left … they had simply moved five minutes away over to that large, private (no humans allowed) grassy area right next to Hood Canal for a day. I can appreciate that. Humans can be noisy and stinky with their motors and vehicles that move all about the place, and with their dogs, and the humans always seem to stand around and take photos! sheesh.
I stood there quite awhile, enjoying the bird calls, the sky, the water, the elk. And finally I noticed something else … it’s in image #8 above (the map is image #1). In image #8, the thing that I noticed is over to the left, way out there, next to the water, near that tall bush.
I zoomed in a bit for the photo below. It’s a large bird!
More zooming. It’s an osprey! How spectacular. 🙂
If anyone wonders whether it is an osprey or not, here’s a photo (to the right) that I borrowed off the internet of another osprey that had a slight breeze behind it that was blowing the feathers on its head just like the breeze was doing to the osprey here on the edge of Hood Canal. There are lots of osprey here in the Pacific NW, but I don’t often see them. This was a thrill.
Gosh it sure pays to stop and look and listen, doesn’t it?
I’m so glad I went for that walk, it would have been so easy to just call it a day and sit around the campsite for the rest of the afternoon rather than take that walk over to Hood Canal and discover the elk, and the osprey.
But then I did head back to my campsite to fix my supper.
As soon as I opened the door to the trailer, Little Towhee (that bird) jumped down out of the trailer and started hopping around. I hadn’t dared take her to the fish hatchery. She would have flown right into those pens and tried to eat those little fish! But when I finally got home to the trailer, I knew she had been cooped up all afternoon and she deserved some free time outside.
I put all my things away inside the trailer, started to fix my supper, set up my laptop so I could upload the day’s photos after supper. And then I went outside again to see what Little Towhee was up to. Gosh, at first I couldn’t find her! I walked around and around the trailer calling to her, no answer. Ah, but eventually I spotted her. Do you see her in the photo below? She’s hard to spot.
She had gotten herself up into that mass of blackberry bushes right behind the trailer. She was just sitting there bobbing up and down. What in the heck is she doing?
Well, turns out this little stuffed towhee bird, Little Towhee, had discovered juicy ripe blackberries … and she liked them!
She had already eaten three or four of them by this time, and was figuring out how to pluck another off the vine without getting pricked by the blackberry thorns. What could I do? I went back into the trailer and brought out a small bucket and then I picked a whole mess of juicy ripe blackberries. She and I enjoyed as many as we wanted for our dessert that evening. Mmm, mmm, mmm, they were good! 🙂
Thanks Little Towhee, I’m not sure I would have noticed those luscious berries. You are one smart bird. 🙂