June 8, 2013 - A Day in the Hanford Reach

Eastern kingbird in mulberry tree

I can't find this one - it looks like coreopsis!

Yellow bee plant

Bald eagle and crow

White Bluffs

White pelicans, in for a landing

Two bucks in velvet

We spent the day on the Columbia River, enjoying the wildlife, the river itself, the warm, pleasant temperatures, and the beauty of the wilderness.  The birds were nesting everywhere along the banks - swallows, red-winged blackbirds, eastern and western kingbirds, yellow-headed blackbirds, colonies of seagulls, and doubtless many others. 

 

At one point, we commented on the surprising fact that we hadn't seen any deer.  Suddenly, there they were.  Two here, one there, six over there...and there were, we think, four bucks on one end of Locke Island, and one doe (poor thing) on the other end, resting in the shade of a lone tree.

 

The terrain itself is always worth watching there...I enjoy simply floating along, letting the river take us where it will (with a fair amount of caution - the river was high yesterday.)  But the silence of the float is always a time of wonder.