Table of Contents

Selected work from the past several years:

2023

What to Watch for in June (Venus, bats, squid eggs, moon snails, chestnut-backed chickadees, Steller’s jays)

Early Looks at Pentheroudakis Preserve (“You don’t have to follow me.”)

Where Trees Are Thrown by the Wind (life on the edge of a clearcut)

Hummingbirds Take It to the Limit; A Gallery of Hair Ice

The 15 Most Camouflaged Critters Around Puget Sound (or 16 if you read it on my substack)

Productive Infections and the Creation of Soil

2022

Eagles and the Genius of Bird Flight (what happens on my way into the lumber store on a terribly windy day)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Falcons and Stinkbugs (plus the anticipation of a mushroomless fall)

Tracking the Lost Conifer, Western White Pine (the discovery of a relict streak of trees)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Crawdad Clues and Maple Mildew (plus a dogwood like a girl in a white dress in a horror film)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Land of Parasitic Plants (plus a big old bug called a toe-biter)

Where Eagles Gathered (a tale of two homes and my mind in the muck)

Around the Hidden Lagoon (daydreaming of a Key Peninsula National Park)

Naturalist’s Notebook: The Elusive Shrew-mole (plus how to tell a salamander from a newt)

Deep in the Tree Frog’s Chorus (deep enough to drown out a passing ambulance)

Where Beaches Are Born (“trees lean like the hands of a hundred drunken clocks”)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Bird’s Nest Fungus in Reverse (plus buffleheads swim through a barbwire fence)

On a Ramble, Raven-watching in the New Year (“freeform and fluid and never complete”)

2021

Naturalist’s Notebook: A Beaver Poop Mystery (plus speedy meteors from a strange source)

Chasing Silence and Sound in Filucy Bay Preserve

Wandering Bands of Berry Hunters (including an old-timer’s story of a currency of love as potent as gemstones)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Doug Firs in Drought and Moles (plus the obligatory squashing of spider myths)

Shell Shapes (a special essay for Salish Magazine)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Snakes Eaten, Snakes Eating (plus, how the hottest-ever temperatures cooled)

At Home with Moths, the Beautiful Bellwethers (a form of penance)

Anatomy of a Feeding Frenzy (from gulls to seals to eagles)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Sky-flakes in Motion (plus the cutest little songbird killer)

In the Land of the Swamp Lanterns (“when the world is mud-luscious”)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Bald Eagle vs. Goldeneye (plus an atmospheric river and screams in the night)

On Foot, Deep in Rocky Creek Preserve (“each turn of fate matters”)

Naturalist’s Notebook: Sea Lions “Jugging” (plus the anti-Sasquatch)

2020

Listening Like Deer (“in stillness I find the faith”)

When the Silver Salmon Return (a maelstrom of chemistry)

Dolphin Pays a Rare Visit to the KP (when Cinco put on a show)

The Bat’s Superpowers and COVID-19 (the longest lifespan of any mammal proportional to its size)

Living in a Coyote’s World (being given the twice-over)

When a Junco Nests in the Garden (“how does anything survive when at first it must be so defenseless?”)

You Say Madrona, I Say Madrone (either way I like it)

When a Giant Pacific Octopus Washes Ashore (a yellowjacket finds it too)

2019

A Newt’s World (innumerable overlapping umwelten)