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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.


The rain had stopped by the time we got up this morning and we ventured down to Pritchard Beach for a walk. There were very few ducks in the water today, only one in the distance I couldn’t identify and a Pied-billed Grebe closer. There was also a cormorant on one of the posts and a couple of Ring-billed Gulls in the grass. However, the trees were alive with birds singing and calling, both near the beach and in the wetlands. We stopped several times simply to listen to the activity over our heads.

At one point we heard a sudden outburst of crow scolding and looked up in time to see a Bald Eagle soar right over us, barely above the tree level.

There are more and more signs of spring as well. The Indian Plum is fully leafing out and starting to bloom, the Snowberry is starting to show tiny leaves and all manner of plants are sticking up through the wet, soggy ground. Near the pond we found a number of Coltsfoot (Petasites frigidus) blooming. I’ve only previously seen this plant once before in the park so perhaps it’s spreading or growing somewhere which has previously been covered in vegetation.

The park is changing by the day and I look forward to watching everything burst into spring.

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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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