Harakka Island is a stone’s throw from the shore in Helsinki and as we waited for the boat to arrive to shuttle us there, I watched large groups of Barnacle Geese wandering around the park and swimming in the water. Some had goslings, but they stayed apart from a large group of geese without young. Walking down to the dock, a Common Tern sat on the hand rail, occasionally leaving to dive after fish in the water below. Along the shore oystercatchers stood with, but apart from the geese and out in the water Common Mergansers swam. 

Our first stop…

While we were in Helsinki we visited the Kivinokka area a couple of times because we were staying within easy walking distance of it. The last time I visited Finland I had taken a short trip to Kivinokka and remembered seeing a lot of birds in the forest area. It’s just outside the boundary of the Viikki Nature Reserve, but included on the maps of the area and has trails and a viewing platform to look out over the reed beds. 

It was much as I remembered. Most of the peninsula is dotted with Finnish summer cabins, tiny buildings…

This summer was the third in a row we have gone camping at Denny Creek, located in North Bend, Washington, near Snoqualmie Pass. The first year it was sunny and warm and I saw dragonflies, butterflies and all manner of moths. Last year, it was decidedly less sunny. We arrived during a light rain, and the next day it rained so hard that we drove east of the Cascades to dry out. The final day was finally dry and peaceful but still cool and there were few insects out. 

This year promised to be sunny with only warm…

In the middle of July we made a trip to Finland, my second visit to the country I had first visited in 2008, and was eager to return and explore more. One of the first things we did was visit the Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki. It had been a few years since I first visited and I found my memory to not be very good. There were some things I remembered clearly, probably thanks to photos I had taken, but otherwise it was like visiting the museum anew. 

We began on the bottom floor…

The very low tides I enjoyed at Scenic Beach State Park over the weekend continued and I didn’t want to miss out. So on the Monday after returning from Hood Canal, I took my daughter to Alki Beach in Seattle to explore. I had already had some great finds at Alki during the low tides at the end of May and it seems I always find something interesting there. The Seattle Aquarium’s Beach Naturalists were already searching and I was bitterly disappointed to hear from them that a Humpback Whale and swam by not more…

Early this year I researched the lowest daytime tides of the spring and summer and made plans around those dates. One of those plans was a visit to Scenic Beach State Park, along Hood Canal in Washington, where we’d camped last year during my 365 Nature Project. I had seen some great intertidal life along the beach like tiny sunflower stars and kelp crabs and hoped to find more during the upcoming low tides.

We arrived just before low tide on a Friday morning in late June and immediately went down to the beach. I spent…