Tony Angell Reflects on Nature

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