Merry Christmas!

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace,
The gladness of Christmas give you hope,
The warmth of Christmas grant you love.
~Author Unknown

Happy Halloween!!

In honor of the date, I thought I would share my attempt at pumpkin carving this year.

Yesterday was my birthday, and my parents gave me a great field guide of insects of the Pacific Northwest, so my next post should feature some neat insect photos I've been saving up in the hopes of being able to ID them when I share the photos.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Happy Fourth! And Explorer Trip Superpod

Happy Fourth of July everyone! We had some nice fireworks here in Friday Harbor, as we do every year. What's awesome is we can watch them right from the docks at our marina.

But I get ahead of myself. The first thing that happened today was another trip on the Western Explorer. When we left the dock it sounded like some of the whales were heading out west towards the Pacific Ocean and a small group of L-Pod whales was on the westside. Once we got on scene, though, it turned out all three pods decided to stay in, and we ended up seeing whales from all three pods.

The first whale we came across way off shore was male J30 Riptide. The whales were really spread out, so after a while we headed in shore to check out some whales who were more grouped up. They were all pretty much milling - heading north for a while, then west offshore, then south, then back east towards shore.

We had a really nice pass by J34 Doublestuf, an 11 year-old male who is already got a "fin sprout" and has grown a lot taller since last year. If you look closely (click on the photo to see a larger version) you can see a notch in his dorsal fin, which is new as of last year:

I was only identifying mostly J-Pod whales out on the water, but once I got home and looked at my photos I found L22 Spirit, shown surfacing here in front of False Bay. She's a 38 year-old female who is the mother of two sons. We were seeing a lot of tall dorsal fins in the area, so they were probably nearby when we were viewing them. Their family group is part of the L12 sub-group that often splits off from the rest of L-Pod.

Later in the evening, we were treated to a spectacular pink and blue sunset before the fireworks. Here's the view from the back deck of our houseboat:

And THEN came the fireworks :)

Happy Easter! Or Should I Say Happy Eostre?

Easter Bunny sighting? No, a brown hare at Sacremento National Wildlife Refuge.

Easter is a holiday I've never really understood. While I've always enjoyed chocolate candies and jellybeans on Easter Sunday, what do bunnies and eggs and candy have to do with the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ? Yesterday I decided to find out by doing a little internet research. While there's controversy surrounding the history of Easter, this seems to be the prevailing story.

Early Christians, seeking widespread acceptance of their new religion, tried to coincide many of their holidays with preexisting pagan celebrations. As a result, many pagan traditions became adopted as part of Christian holidays. The Christian timing of the rise of Christ happened to coincide with the pagan festivals of Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar which roughly coincides with April that was meant to celebrate the mother goddess Eostre, a symbol of fertility in the lush season of spring. The word eventually became Eastre, and then Easter.

Rabbits/hares and eggs are ancient symbols associated with fertility, eggs by their very nature and rabbits by their springtime abundance and ability to breed. These symbols have long been incorporated into traditions to celebrate the renewal that is the coming of spring, including being part of celebrations of Eostre. Another example is of egg decorating being part of a Persian ritual associated with the spring equinox. Easter was also about renewal to the Christians, through the resurrection of Christ, so all the symbols eventually became associated.

European folklore tells stories about egg-laying hares, a myth that probably gave rise to the Easter Bunny, another concept of Germanic origin in the 1600s (though European tradition states the Easter Bunny is a hare, not a rabbit). Hares raise their young in a hollow in the ground rather than a burrow, and plovers and lapwings lay eggs in similar looking structures in the same sort of habitat, which likely led to the belief that rabbits might lay eggs.

The early concept of the Easter Bunny was that children would make a nest hidden in their house, and if they were good then in the morning it would be filled with colored eggs, candy and treats. It's not hard to see how that tradition became the Easter egg hunt.

So the result of all this religious and secular history is a holiday that is a mishmash of symbols and traditions. At least now I know why we get to eat chocolate and decorate eggs on Easter.

Merry Christmas!

Here in Portland the forecasted warm-up has never really happened, and we actually got a bit more snow overnight last night. The neighborhood has been transformed into a true winter wonderland, and a couple of times we even went cross-country skiing right from my parents' front yard. Luckily, the roads are passable along as you drive slowly, so we were able to get out a little bit to stock up on groceries for our holiday meals and take me to the dentist (yuck!). It looks like everyone should be able to get here for my small family's finest tradition: our Christmas Eve celebrations. I hope you all have a great holiday wherever you may be!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's easy, especially in our society today I think, to dwell on the problems we have, the things that aren't perfect, and everything that's going wrong. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how lucky we are. I try to remind myself often not to take things for granted, especially when I wake up in the morning and can say "I live on San Juan Island!" It's a special thing to be able to live in such a beautiful place.

I like to take a little time every Thanksgiving to remember a few of the long list of things I have to be thankful for: I live in a place where wild killer whales make their home, I get to spend time photographing wildlife on almost a daily basis, I have some very special family and friends that support me in all the crazy things I do, Barack Obama is our President Elect!.....I hope you do the same.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween!

I'm down in Portland this week to celebrate my birthday with some family and friends, but from what I hear it sounds like the whales have still been around the islands quite a bit. K-Pod has been around pretty consistently, and Js and Ls showed up yesterday to make it two consecutive years there's been a superpod on my birthday (that I've missed, of course!) Oh well, you just can't see them all, and I've been having a fun time down in the city as well as getting a lot of "mainland" chores done that you just can't do on the island.

This photo is of some pumpkins we carved on the island last week. When we turned all the lights off with candles inside, it was amazing to see that the pumpkins themselves glowed bright, even from behind on the uncarved side! By balancing my camera on the back of a chair with a long exposure time I was able to get a picture that shows how eerie the effect was. I wonder if these pumpkins had a thinner rind than normal? I don't ever remember the pumpkins themselves glowing so much! In any case, I hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!