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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.

June is also 30 Days Wild and I’m participating again this year.


Today we ventured south to Tacoma to visit Point Defiance Park, which is situated on the north end of Tacoma in the south end of the Puget Sound. We walked along the gravelly Owen Beach, on the east side of the park but didn’t see much wildlife. A single seal patrolled the waters and a pair of Pigeon Guillemots were out in the sound, but disturbed by boats. The beach is simply gravel so there are no marine animals and with the exception of one jellyfish that had washed up, there was little else to find. I did watch gulls catching snails in the water and once they got back on the shore, the crows would harass them and try to steal whatever they had.

Near the end of the walk I saw a cormorant in the water and we watched a Bald Eagle circling over the ferry between Tacoma and Vashon Island. I wonder if the ferry disturbs fish in the sound and stirs them up and the eagles have learned to watch for fish moving around the ferry. Or perhaps it was a simple coincidence.

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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