kdavis_nature's Identifications

Remembering this sighting--notes to myself: Last evening, I was at the Montlake Fill (near UW Stadium) with my daughter Alex. We were birdwatching, but she wanted to see something she’d witnessed the week before—that at dusk all the beaver return from the lake up the canal (a pedestrian bridge crosses it) and so we were there to see this fun migration. We watched 5 individual beaver head up the canal over the course of 20-30 mins.
Next, she headed down the trail to look for nutria, while I stayed on the bridge. I suddenly heard a loud commotion in the brush to the east near a marshy area where I had been hearing Marsh Wren. In the next instant, a small rabbit came charging towards me at full speed followed by a coyote, which stopped short at the start of the bridge when it saw me. I had just enough time to catch a glimpse of the rabbit scaling the 4-foot solid wood railing and then leaping over it, splashing into the canal where it surfaced and dog-paddled rapidly to the water’s edge. Meanwhile, the coyote sized me up, paced a bit and headed back along the canal to the south. (I captured a video of it, but not the rabbit.)
I didn’t see the rabbit exit the water, but I was worried it had a hard time warming up last night after getting soaked! (I had no idea they could swim!)
Alex said the alternative was warming up in a coyote’s belly!
It was a very exciting moment of action in the city—and this is a great place to go at dusk
(A bit earlier we had watched a Bald Eagle swoop at a large flock of American Coot—in the lake near Foster Island—until it had separated one from the flock, where it proceeded to try to tire it out. Two crows came over to hassle the eagle, and it flew away without the coot—that time.)