Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The loon is a diver; the cormorant a i sher; the petrel a mari-
ner . . . the bush-tits belong to the builder's caste. They are
specialists in domestic architecture.
—W. Leon Dawson with John H. Bowles,
The Birds of Washington
(1909)
By the i rst week of June 2002, I'd already passed the eighty-foot-tall
Douglas-i r ten times. Flocks of bushtits roamed this area earlier in the year,
and lately I'd seen a pair of them. I searched in vain for their nest. Bushtits,
tiny gray cotton balls that l oat among the thick salmonberry, intrigued me.
Like penguins amassing on the ice before plunging into dangerous waters, they
gather at the slightest gap in cover and then singly bounce across, twittering
in celebration as they reconnect on the other side. This day, I wondered about
their social dynamics. Does the l ock completely dissolve into pairs to breed?
Why are the males' eyes beady black while the females' are shiny gold? In my
distraction the pair I was stalking disappeared and with them any reasonable
chance of scoring the nest.
