Chris Rurik, KP News

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Dusk, late summer. A deer works the edge of the pasture. A lonely frog, peeping, is answered by a cricket. As the light slips, a bat skitters in and out of the shrinking circle I can see. more
The bones look like driftwood from a distance, half-submerged at the high tide line. Binoculars reveal them to be ancient stone artifacts. Or so it seems. This whale carcass is hard to believe. … more
Last month my wife was attacked while running near our home in Lakebay. It was dusk. She had just left the paved county road for a forest road when she felt something grab her hair and yank upward. … more
It is a joy to come across a wasp like this. In the matted thick grass where my pasture will flood in winter, it dances along the stalks, wings flashing, blue-black body orienting this way and that. … more
Last October, for the first time in recent memory, a bear paid a visit to Herron Island. By the time word got out and folks went looking, it was nowhere to be found, swum back to the mainland. … more
Venus has phases, like the moon. Our neighbor planet is putting on a show these days, high in the western sky, the first point of light to appear as sunset fades. On June 4 it will reach its greatest … more
For Jim Watts, spring means time on the road with hundreds of thousands of bees in his truck. One by one he visits an ever-growing list of home orchards, hobby farms, clearcuts and gardens. At each, … more
The wren is basically a mouse. It weaves through ferns. Then it appears on a stump not 10 feet away. It glances at us and, without a second thought, goes about its inspection of the stump’s … more
If you want to feel like a shrimp in a kelp forest, a good place to start is in a real forest on a windy day, your back on a log, trees flexing like grasses above you, the sky crowded with clouds … more
Q: What’s with the hummingbirds in January? Are they dive-bombing? I thought the high-pitch chirp was a squirrel, but those are hummingbirds? — Megan Schowalter, Longbranch more
On the Key Peninsula of old, you could hire a “beeliner” … more
Visitors pass through the Key Peninsula and notice only our impressive trees. Those who know the terrain well know how much can be concealed here.  Camouflaged critters exploit psychology as … more
A shoreline summer camp, the former site of an iconic lighthouse, a working sheep farm and over 1,000 feet of mainstem Minter Creek are among seven properties that two local land trusts worked to … more
A robin pulls a worm from the lawn. A brief tension, released, and with a few tosses of the robin’s head the worm is gone. Dawn on New Year’s Day. It’s my first bird of the year. … more
I’m not sure how I see them. It is the most turbulent day of winter yet. Wind tears through the firs that surround Key Center. I scuttle across the highway and aim for Capitol Lumber, eyes … more
Last month, writing about what to anticipate in our natural world, I pointed to the return of rain as one of September’s most important events. Hold on. That was two months ago. … more
The fruit harvest will be low in home orchards across the Key Peninsula this year. more
“What pines? Where are these pines?” asked my birding friend after I mentioned I’d been getting to know western white pine, the forgotten conifer of our Key Peninsula forest. more
In 2018 the top broke off a tall Douglas fir and fell into YMCA Camp Seymour’s amphitheater, smashing several rows of benches and destroying the fire pit ring. No campers were present at the … more
Welcome to September. Short and golden blaze the final days of summer. The atmosphere stirs. Chickadees, nuthatches, creepers and kinglets gather into acrobatic groups. Blackberries are again … more
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