On Monday I got a very good long good look at a sea otter near Dash Point state park, and it had no apparent tags on its hind flippers, nor anywhere else. It wasn't all that large, perhaps four feet, but it clearly had rear feet made for swimming. At the 2001 Puget Sound Research Conference, I had heard that WA sea otter populations were rapidly recovering and that sightings in the sound would be much more frequent.
Over the course of an hour I shot nearly 3 rolls of film, and a couple of images are now on a King County web-site of marine mammal photos:
http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wlr/waterres/marine/mammals.htm
On the same day I made a cursory check of two purple martin gourds hanging near the pier at the Port of Seattle terminal 5 public access, west of Harbor Island. The gourd nearest the pier had four eggs, and the other had two nestlings and one egg. Ballard still has three pairs, and T-105 had one pair as of yesterday.
At Golden Gardens yesterday I thought I was going to witness a young bald eagle preying on a young great blue heron. Eight herons were at the north end of the park on the beach when an immature eagle spiraled down from above, feet extended, and hovered about 10 feet over a heron. After about 5 seconds of terrorizing the heron, it flew off a bit and landed on the beach about 30 yards away. Only one or two of the herons flew, the others seemed perplexed and showed no reaction ("maybe if I don't move it will just go away...").
Kevin Li
Ballard, USA
kdli at msn.com