Clever Marmot

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.

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.

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