I have always liked this reflection, or what I call, a “puddle shot.” It was among my first captures for the purpose back in December of 2006. But, I had not found a suitable subject to work into it until this Varied Thrush showed up on my patio near sunset just a couple of weeks ago.
2016 Audubon entry #7
The Klamath Refuge in Northern California is a great place for birding. It was a pretty foggy day when I took this picture. I didn’t think it was a particularly interesting shot until I filtered up the tule weeds in the background, and changed it to black and white.
2016 Audubon entry #6
As a college student, my itinerary for exploring Europe was determined by where I could find Hieronymus Bosch paintings to view in person. When I arrived in Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands–Bosch’s home town– it just happened to be during Fasching (carnival). The train pulled into the station just as a parade was ending there. To my great amazement, many characters right out of his paintings were milling about on the steps of the depot. I made my way to his house where I found a dead sparrow lying on his front step. Whew! As a 19 yr old, that was some heavy messaging. I had no idea what it meant, but it was awesome!
Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights
Anyway, I often see crows feasting on roadkill. When I came upon this shot, it struck me as an interesting turn of events. Graphically, I just liked the boldness of the red better than the original.
2016 Audubon entry #5
It would be a bit of an understatement to say Hieronymus Bosch was a birder extraordinaire.
When I first tiled the roots and leaves together in the photo below, it reminded me of a Persian carpet, but when I zoomed in, it was an Hieronymus Bosch-like world for sure.
2016 Audubon entry #4
The Garden of Birdly Delights
Caught in the grass, but not the least bit embarrassed.
2016 Audubon entry #3
Darts, you say? I’m out of here.
2016 Audubon entry #2:
Red-Breasted Sapsucker
It is time again for Audubon’s annual photography contest. Last year, they created a “Fine Art” category—meaning, you can manipulate the photos to your heart’s content :-). That motivated me to submit 10 images, one of which—Tapestry—made the semi-finals. Anyway, here is the first of my submissions for 2016:
Great Blue Heron
Yesteday, we had the final hearing in our effort to keep commercial development out of this farming valley. I think it went well, but I can’t say what the outcome will be for sure. The decision is now in the hands of the Growth Management Board. They give us their verdict the first of March. In any case, after many months, I have my life back—Yee Ha! I hope to be posting to this blog a lot more often 
As expected, the City Council blew off the Planning Commission’s recommendation and voted 4-3 to approve the rezoning of the 43 acre wetlands/slough/farmland below me from Limited Open Space to General Commercial—for a third time in as many years. The City submitted its “Statement of Compliance” to the Growth Management Board on the 1st of December and we had until January 4th to respond. I pulled an all-nighter (minus a couple of hours sleeping in my chair), and sent mine off a half hour before the 5pm deadline. I had spent the last three months researching the obfuscation in the new 248 page “Supplemental” Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), but I didn’t allow myself enough time to get everything I wanted into a coherent presentation. It was 30 pages, but it could have easily been 60.
This 2015 SEIS is supposed to remedy the environmental issues in the 348 page 2013 EIS that precipitated the Board’s invalidation of the rezone in 2014. In that 2013 EIS, the engineering firm that created it insisted that the blackberry bushes—eight feet high and hundreds of feet long—were solid ground according to their infallible LIDAR maps. If excavated, these “mounds” would provide all the compensatory flood storage they needed to raise their 11 acre building site a foot above floodplain. The Board felt they hadn’t adequately considered how grading the property down to the edge of the slough would affect currents during a flood and how that might erode the base of the steep slope at the top of which my forty neighbors and I reside.
East Monroe During Nov 18, 2015 flood
With the blackberry bush ruse now untenable and clearly too little compensatory flood storage available to allow for raising the building site a foot above floodplain, the only option was to lower the floodplain. So, the engineering firm brings in an additional unimpeachable expert to impeach their own unimpeachable conclusions in the 2013 EIS. Miraculously, and to everyone’s astonishment, they “discover”—actually, they decide from a cursory investigation—that there is no culvert beneath the railroad tracks at the entrance end of the slough, so all the water in the slough is coming from ditches along the highway. Now, you might think that would be easy to disprove because every aerial photo shows the slough approaching the tracks from the south and continuing on to the north toward the East Monroe property, but the culvert is deeply submerged and in a difficult place to access. The railroad, BNSF will not confirm or deny there is a culvert there. A local farmer did investigate with an 8′ rod and found what he figured was likely the culvert. But, they’ve got the “expert” who authored the FEMA studies of the Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers responding, “Frankly, if there is a culvert there, and it is buried, it is performing the same function as no culvert at all.”
This finding is incredibly convenient. It allows them—using the Army Corp of Engineers’ river analysis software—to model the slough as a very small tributary instead of a side channel of the river. It means flood water can only back onto the property from the west end. This in turn means, at the peak of a flood, the water in the slough is at a complete standstill. And, according to the expert, it means the base flood elevation can be lowered from 67ft to 65.35 ft. And, it means these are now the “existing condition” by which all other impacts are measured.
Well, of course, this is all BS, but it took downloading that software and its 800 page manual, and months of research to undermine the credibility of this expert with his own earlier pronouncements and studies—as well as those of many other experts in the field. Then, the day after the City adopted the new rezone ordinances, we had a flood. The water flowed in from the east end and continued down hill as it always does.
It is in the hands of the Board, now. The City has 10 days to respond to our objections.
Fortunately for the cause, another neighbor has a much better grasp of the legal inadequacies of this rezone attempt, and she submitted her own 30 pages on the subject. They have a lot to weasel their way out of. I’m pretty confident they will not succeed.
I love where I live! I love it when I can grab my camera, run out into the yard and catch the neighbors flying by.
My neighbor dropped in unexpectedly
I shot him, not the least bit regrettably
There was nothing to fear
I’d made it perfectly clear
All are welcome, at least theoretically
