Biologist Susan Sharbaugh, formerly of the Alaska Bird Observatory, once spoke about the strategies birds employ to survive in our season of darkness and cold. She talked about the flighty birds that split, and the hardy few that stay. I thought I knew something about birds, but she kept delivering facts that were new to […]
Right now, young Chinook salmon are leaving the rivers they were born in to begin life at sea. The first year in the ocean is thought to be the most critical time in the life of a salmon, and largely decides how many will live and be available to harvest as adults or return to […]
The upper Colville River is one of the quietest places on the planet, a land of cliffs and tundra and tangles of willow. Fashion Island is one of the most human-altered landscapes in America, where developers long ago replaced the native vegetation with a Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang’s. A female peregrine falcon born in […]
Every year, gray whales migrate from their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic to their wintering grounds off Baja California in Mexico. And roughly every other year, scientists with binoculars count them as they funnel past a point on the California coast a bit south of Monterey Bay. Scientists conduct this survey to keep track […]