BirdingGirl

Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=hope+island&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl Here are some pictures from our trip to the San Juan Islands back in June. We had a wedding in Vancouver June 26th and decided to make a whole vacation out of it. Steve's old co-worker Julie (of J&J's Excellent Adventure fame) lives in Anacortes, WA and invited us to visit and stay with her and her husband Jay. Not only was it great to catch up with our friends, but how often do you get an amazing destination like the San Juan Islands to visit with personal tour guides?? On Friday they both had to work but generously let us use their car and sea kayaks to explore Puget Sound. On their advice we picked up lunch at Gere-a-Deli (the hummus veggie sandwich was sooo good) and then drove to Snee Oosh Beach where we put in. It was my first time in a sea kayak so I was little nervous in the fast-moving water, but at the end of the day I was proud of my accomplishment and cele...

On June 16th, the Boston Peregrine Falcon (the remaining male of the Christian Science falcon pair ) stopped by our office's window ledge. I assume this is the male of the pair because he is so much smaller than the female that we were used to. Another noticeable trait is how big the male falcon's feet are. Just look at the size of those talons! You can see the falcon's nictitating membrane up on its right eye. I'm not sure the reason for this, perhaps his eye suffered an injury or infection and he was keeping it up to protect it. At least twice I saw him lower it to look directly at us but he then he put it immediately back up. Does anyone know a lot about nictitating membranes? They've always fascinated me in birds. Here's one of a red-tailed hawk nictitating membrane that came up when it was preening/scratching. In one of these photos you can see part of the falcon's ID band. It looks like it has the letter I and the number 7 on it.