© Tony Angell
Tony Angell, gazing on Puget Sound, writes: "From the beach below, that evocative perfume of the sea, decaying kelp, is wafted up on the breeze... Near the shore, disputing kingfishers rattle in their mercenary manner, chasing one another... Behind me, in the woods, a Cooper's hawk chants and ravens chortle and croak, composing poems and telling jokes. For the moment, at least, all is right with the world." You can read more in Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye.
BirdNote®
Reflecting upon Puget Sound
With Tony Angell
This is BirdNote.
[Gulls in distance + Chadwick Hill ambient]
Author Tony Angell reflects on the view from atop a bluff on an island in Northwest Washington State.
“The view across the Strait of Juan de Fuca holds little evidence suggesting the presence of the four-plus million people living within the Puget Sound basin. Then a tanker churns into view from behind a headland, and I’m brought back from the Age of Exploration to the twenty-first century. So powerful do the profiles of nature remain here that it’s easy to imagine that there are no challenges to the pristine integrity of Puget Sound. [Glaucous-winged gulls]
From the beach below, that evocative perfume of the sea, decaying kelp, is wafted up on a breeze as I watch a line of Pelagic Cormorants fly with impressive certainty across the mouth of the bay. Near the shore, disputing kingfishers rattle in their mercenary manner, chasing one another through the madronas. [rattle of kingfishers] Behind me, in the woods, a Cooper’s Hawk chants [call of the Cooper’s Hawk] and ravens chortle and croak, composing poems and telling jokes [chortles of raven]. For the moment, at least, all is right with the world.” [Chortles and croaks of raven]
For a link to Tony Angell’s book, Puget Sound Through an Artist’s Eye, come to our website, birdnote.org.
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Calls of the birds provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Belted Kingfisher recorded by S.R. Pantle; Common Raven and Cooper’s Hawk recorded by G.A. Keller; Glaucous-winged Gulls by A.A. Allen.
Ambient forest by C. Peterson
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2015 Tune In to Nature.org October 2013/2015/2020
ID#: angellt-nature-01-2010-10-10-MM
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