Tag Archives: 48 North magazine

New Published Story

Tidepool Sculpin – My 48 North story for September 2018

Never got around to posting this in the midst of a bunch of much bigger paintings, but this was my September magazine page for 48 North magazine.  It’s late to post here, but I always want to leave a record of my stuff to keep track of it all.

Sculpins: a quick little color study of these tiny fish that live in rocky tidepools in the Northwest. There are many reasons to make these little guys (smaller than your thumb) featured here, but my favorite is the rather homebody lifestyle they have. Simply put, they like where they live and never stray far. Sure, they can live out of the water through an entire tidal change, and sure, they check out other pools as far away as a football field, but they always return home, and to the same pool!

Here’s a closeup of the little guy, loose pencil and watercolor. I don’t give myself much time on these and I like the process because it’s so very different than many of my bigger projects that are tight and detailed. Compare this with the 500 square feet of Hoh Rain Forest paintings I was doing at the same time I did this little sculpin and you can imagine the relief of starting and finishing something in the same session. Ahhh.

And here is the text that went with it in 48 North magazine:

Go ashore – poke around tidepools, and chances are good you’ll find this little sculpin. It might take a bit of looking, because their habit of secrecy means staying put, not moving a fin and waiting for you to pass by. Superbly camouflaged, these small 3.5” fish settle to the tide pool bottom and blend in so well with sand, crushed shells and bits of seaweed they just disappear. Put your hand over the water and, like a flash, they shoot forward to a safer place. It’s still the same tidepool, so just watch them flash, settle, and then have a good look. As the tide returns, sculpins could move about to other areas, but they have a home pool and rarely stray far. If moved, say 300 feet to another tidepool, they return to their original pool, not unlike salmon returning to spawn to their home stream.

There are five sculpin species here and all are carnivores, hunting small crustaceans and seaworms. In turn, they are hunted by all sorts of predators from herons to otters, so sharp spines that take the place of scales are protection as they live in a confined space with no escape. Sculpins occasionally get stranded out of water at low tide, beneath seaweed or under rock ledges. Not to worry. These fish can breathe air until the water returns a few hours later. Other fish can do this, too, and it begs the comparison to when fish crawled out of the water for good and took to the land in an evolutional move that eventually became us. Think about that next time you see one of these little fish. Is that you, grand dad?

This is the tidepool where I did much of the research for this story, Beach 4 at Olympic National Park. It’s one of our favorites for a low-tide poking around.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story, Wildlife

Anemones – My monthly magazine story for August 2018

I’m a bit late on posting some of my 48 North magazine stories. Just too many interesting paintings happening that always seem more current. This one was the story pages back in August, so that meant I painted it in June. I promise, I’ll catch up to current soon.

And here’s just the art. It’s watercolor and pencil, brightened up with the computer before assembling the story with a readable font. I’ve tried this with my own lettering but it’s just not nearly as readable. 48 North magazine is here.

I have over 70 stories in past issues and you can read them on my website here.

I did another plumose anemone story before this one. Here it is from 2027,

And here’s the story:

Plumose Anemone

Look down the closest piling at low tide and chances are good you’ll see these animals. Yes, they animals, animals that look like flowers. Animals with deadly stinging tentacles that can move around and even grab, kill and eat small fish. There are many species of anemones in the Salish Sea, some tiny inch-wide creatures that congregate in colorful crowds, others can be two feet tall. The plumose averages a respectful 12” tall and can have up to 100 tentacles that sting and grab any morsel that floats by. The meal, often microscopic, is then transferred down into a waiting mouth, throat and stomach to be consumed. Remember Little Shop of Horrors? This is an oceanic equivalent, except there are millions of them under our docks and floats. Low tide might expose them to air, in which case they sort of fold up like a deflated balloon and wait for the incoming tide.

Anemones can move about, leaving one spot behind when it senses danger or a lack of food. When it does, it simply walks off, but leaves behind some anemone DNA and from this a new anemone will grow. In summer, it also creates and releases sperm and eggs that drift around until ‘things happen’. This animal is well-armed, as I said. It possesses two types of stinging tentacles, the most common is for stinging prey, a second set is for defense. These can elongate 2 or 3 times their length and reach out to attach anything passing by – think stinging nettles on your favorite river trail. Others from inside the body can be shot through the body column or mouth to do the same attacking. Basically, this beautiful animal may look great but it’s a killer if you’re a small witless creature swimming past. So, here’s the drill: at low tide, put your stomach on the dock, peep down the piling well and have a look for yourself. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

Water Ballet – my 48 North magazine story for July

A month late, there’s an entirely new one on in the stores this week. Better late than never! This is the story that goes with the sketchbook page:

We’re all connected to nature, connected to the web of life. Sure, we all know that, but can you explain it to your mates? Here’s a story you can use. There are many types of small foraging fish in the Salish Sea, surf smelt, herring, candlefish, herring and others. All swim together, “school,” for safety, and they all eat microscopic animals floating in the water. In turn, they are THE critical food source for many bigger critters – eagles, seabirds, seals, salmon and whales – to name just a few. In summer, I often see gulls frantically diving on large forage fish ‘balls’, so add gulls to the list. If the forage fish were to disappear, so would all the rest – and that appears to be what’s happening around here – for lots of reasons. To explain a bit more, take surf smelt. Most spawn on beaches at high tide where they lay eggs on sand or gravel. The eggs can tolerate occasional drying, and so smelt eggs are usually higher up on the beach. Sand lance and herring are lower and never exposed to air.

As you sail along, glance at the shoreline you’re passing. Are there human-placed boulders? Concrete walls? Old creosote-laden pilings or berms? All these are death to surf smelt because there isn’t sufficient beach for spawning. If there is some room below the barriers, imagine what will happen when Climate Change raises sea level a bit more. Forage fish occupy every marine and estuarine habitat in the Salish Sea – at least the ones unaltered by us. Some forage fish spawn out in open water, but most create their next generation right on our beaches. Surf smelt eggs have been documented on 275 miles of Puget Sound shorelines, about 10% of the total. I’m a painter of nature, as you can see, and, as part of much bigger projects, in the past two years I’ve created outdoor exhibits for 12 locations interpreting shoreline restoration. Changes are helping these small fish, but is it enough to save salmon and orcas?

And here’s the page on my website:

http://larryeifert.com/published-writings-and-art/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine/2018-03/

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, New Published Story

Western Grebes in 48 North this month

I’m always months late posting these stories. This one is as close to being current as it gets – it’s still in stores for another day.

Here’s the text:

If I were Mother Nature, designer of all things wild, I would have felt proud completing the western grebe – a job well-done. First, it’s just a beautiful creature, but parts are combined to make an amazing machine. That bright red eye helps see underwater and bulbous feet allow it to move faster than fish can swim. Those funny over-sized feet also make it possible to run OVER water and even walk upright on shore like a Dapper-Dan in a black and white tux. Then there is this double-jointed neck that curves backward and can act like a spear. It bends back and – wham, into a fleeing fish. This is quite the bird, and it’s here right now for you to see in the Salish Sea. Look for these gregarious birds in quiet bays. They’ll be in flocks, almost never alone.

During spring and summer breeding season, western grebes are found on freshwater wetlands far to the north and east of our coast. In the fall, they fly south and west to salt water, often during the night. Once they get to the Salish Sea or other warmer lakes and bays along the West Coast, they congregate in large flocks, sometimes in the thousands. I once saw western grebes on Clear Lake in California, a mass of birds from shore to shore covering many miles of water. During spring courtship, these birds are known for their elaborate rituals and displays. Pairs both react to some private signal (a wink?) and both rise out of the water in unison and run together, side by side, in a flutter of feet defying gravity. Having spent their energy, they ‘land’ in the water again and act as if nothing has happened. Well, it probably hasn’t, yet.

All the rest of these, five years worth, are here in a new section on my website:

http://larryeifert.com/published-writings-and-art/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine/

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

Stories from the Salish Sea on the website

I’ve recently gotten requests for back pages of my monthly magazine page in 48 North in Seattle. I often forget to post them, and going back through 65 months, I found I only had maybe 12 on the website. So, now they’re all up HERE so you can binge read them all, five years of them – as if you would. It was actually fun to go back and see how they’ve evolved, much tighter art now, looser in the writing. 48 North is a magazine all sailors from the Northwest read from time to time. It’s the ‘pickup’ mag we get in boating and marine supply stores everywhere, and I’ve gotten fan mail all the way from San Diego and Hawaii for my stories. Kind of fun to see the ‘legs’ of something published.

Below is a sample of what the printed page actually looks like with the text.

And here’s the link again in case you missed it.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story, Wildlife

Red-throated Loons – My 48 North story for November, 2017

This is my 48 North magazine story for November. I thought t he subtle colors of this beautiful winter bird came out fairly well. Here’s the story:

“On the Port Townsend ferry, we crossed those notorious tide rips out in Admiralty Inlet and I spied quite a group of large striking birds, all milling about and diving for dinner in the turbulence. The red-throated loons are back from the north for winter in the Salish Sea. At about 24” long, these are the smallest of the three species of loons we see here, but they are still large birds. Easy to identify in flight, they have a hunchbacked look unlike any other Salish Sea bird and appear to fly very fast. Specialized bodies with legs placed as far to the stern as possible make for fast underwater swimming as they chase down and catch small fish. As with many species, they have evolved into a very specialized and successful fishing machine.”

“They arrive here in winter plumage, basic tux black and white with a very subtle mix that would drive a painter wild trying to portray. As winter progresses, they change profiles completely and sport a dramatic red-orange front and overall soft look of doe skin. Then they’re off for the long flight to the far northern lakes to nest, and here is where it gets interesting. These birds, with legs placed so far back on their bodies, make them almost unable to walk. They cannot stand upright! So, the loons push vegetation around to create a floating nest or simply push themselves up on a low shore. How the eggs stay warm enough to hatch is a mystery to me, but somehow it works – and next November we’ll see the results here with more red-throated loons to enjoy.”

Again, here’s the link to the NEW new puzzle I talked about last week.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

This Month in 48 North Magazine

 

Somehow, I managed to meld together two of my favorites into one article this month in 48North magazine – nature and sailing. Here’s the story:

I’ve watched marbled murrelets for decades, learned their recognizable upturned heads as they slipped past the boat. I also remember the “big mystery” over 40 years ago; no one knew where the murrelet nested. Sure, there were birds seen in the ocean from California to Alaska and throughout the Salish Sea, but no nests were ever found even after a reward was offered. Then in 1974, a tree trimmer stumbled on a downy chick high in an old-growth Douglas-fir. Loggers had seen them, called them ‘fog larks’, but loggers and ornithologists somehow never got together to talk about all this. It turned out the murrelet liked, no, required old-growth forests. They need giant trees with big branches and mossy limbs. So, this football-shaped small 10” seabird soon became center stage in a giant battle between the tree-cutting corporations and environmentalists who realized the bird was doomed if all the big legacy trees were cut. In 1992, the murrelet was Federally listed under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species.

While most of the old trees are now either protected or gone forever, it appears the bird’s numbers are still declining. This may be because murrelets usually produce one chick every other year. Parents trade nest-sitting duties and adults take turns flying to and from the ocean with a single fish – mostly at dusk and dawn. Youngsters molt into juvenile feathers before leaving the nest, and when the time is right, they simply step off the nest and learn to fly on the way down. If successful, they make their way, unaided, to the ocean. Now, if there was ever a single moment where a species needed a reality check, I think it might be right here. Let’s say you are a little bird the size of a robin that’s never been anywhere. You’re sitting in a tree several hundred feet off the ground. You’re in Mount Rainier National Park and you can’t even SEE the ocean – and yet one day you jump off the nest into thin air. Just saying!

Larry Eifert paints and blogs about wild places at larryeifert.com. His art can be seen in many national parks across America.

And here’s the other ‘favorite’ in my life.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

My 48 North Magazine Story for the Month – A Dancing Gull

2015-11-Dancing-Gull

After watching a little song-and-dance on the beach, I wrote this for my monthly page in 48 North magazine. You can read it online at their website too.

Here’s the text for the story:

A recent beach walk showed us something we’d never seen. Meandering along a sandy stretch that had just a gentle bit of wave action, we joined a glaucous-winged gull (the most common gull in the Salish Sea) who was walking here too. It seemed to know exactly what it was doing – looking for something right where the little waves were breaking. Soon it stopped, turned to face the incoming water and started doing a little dance. Dabble, dabble, dabble it went for about 20 seconds, turning slightly but keeping it up. As each wave came in, the gull used the rushing water to prance ever deeper into the sand – and then it looked down – and began to grab the mole crabs and other small burrowing crustaceans it had forced to the surface in the wash zone.

Mole crabs like to bury themselves right at the tide line where food is abundant. They sense when the tide is receding and slowly follow it out, a few feet at a time. This young gull had learned the crab’s ritual and realized that just a little dance, up and down, left and right – and lunch would magically appear. We watched it long enough to realize that it was nothing but normal for this smart bird, and then wondered why all the other gulls didn’t do this too. Maybe it was evolution happening right before our eyes. Most of the time, watching nature isn’t seeing a giant whale surface or an eagle dive on a salmon, but it’s the small rewards of seeing daily lives of creatures that share our world that is normal – if you’ve smart enough to see them.

I took a couple of phone videos of this little guy dancing along at the surf line. Click to see one here on YouTube.  Sorry, it’s a bit shakey in the wind but you can still see the little guy dancing away while Nancy does commentary.

Thanks for reading this week. My big mural is coming along just fine. Next post I’ll show you how it’s going.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

Fin Whales – My 48 North Story this Month

Here’s my story in 48 North magazine this month, available far and wide. I’ve been told people even get this in the boat stores in Hawaii. This story is about what was undoubtedly the biggest living creature that’s ever come so close to our little meadow here in Port Townsend!

This is the text:

In early September, the Puget Sound Express whale-watching boat crew spied a rare fin whale off Whidbey Island, the first one spotted in the Salish Sea in decades. The Fin is the second largest mammal on the planet and named for its slender, fin-backed shape. I honestly didn’t know much about them, so I did some reading – and this is such an interesting creature that I wanted to share what I found. These whales are gigantic, for sure, and can become almost 90 feet long and can weigh 165,000 pounds. How big is this? A single fin whale could produce 660,000 whale burgers, or enough for every person in Seattle with leftovers. Don’t worry, I’d be willing to bet most of us would order something else.

Like other whales, this one was hunted (and still is), and it’s reported that between 1905 and 1976, 725,000 were slaughtered in the Southern Hemisphere alone. Fins, or finbacks have been described as the greyhound of the sea for their slender body that is “built like a racing yacht … which can surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamship.” What caught my eye was the somewhat hidden description of the Fin’s eating style. Being a baleen whale, it filters small fish and crustaceans, shrimp and krill by simply opening its mouth wide, lunging forward and taking in whatever is in front of it – and then straining out what’s unnecessary (including about half the ocean). But it’s not just a dainty mouth! My drawings tell it all, and by this technique, a fin can consume about 4,000 pounds of food each day, probably explaining how it can grow so large in the first place.

And just to make a size comparison, here’s my little boat sailing along with its typical line-clutter everywhere (a quick boat has lots of strings attached). An adult fin whale would be 5 times longer than the boat and eat 6 times more than it weighs.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Interpretive Art, Nature Art, New Published Story

Caspian Tern – My 48-North Story for August 2015

This month’s sketchbook and published story in 48 North magazine is about Caspian Terns. These few summer weeks are the only times I see these birds while I’m sailing about Port Townsend Bay. Actually, I almost always hear them first, then spot these big guys, and since I try to paint what I see, this was an easy choice for August.

Here’s the story:

This is a sound I hear often on quiet summer sails. Kaaaaarr – like a smoker attempting to clear a raspy throat. I instantly know that sound, and always turn and look up to find the hacker. Then, here it comes, flying fast and high, head down studying the water for a vague shape that indicates dinner. Seeing this, I know two things: it’s summer, and the Caspian Terns are back! I watch as the fast and effortless white bird glides past. Then, fish spotted, it goes into a corkscrew spiral, then into a dive and fully submerges – out the tern comes and quickly takes off with young salmon in mouth (unlike similarly sized gulls that are unable to truly dive).

Most Caspian Terns in Washington nest at the Columbia River estuary, and after family duties are over, both young and parents spread out to spend the summer fishing along the coast and into the Salish Sea. Their numbers are expanding, mainly due to dredged materials that offer new nesting islands, and since terns have a fondness for young salmon – well, you see the problem. Dredge the Columbia River estuary and suddenly you get more birds, the birds eat the salmon, we’re spending millions trying to save salmon. Some Caspian Terns in Washington are medium-distance migrants, wintering on the coast of California, while others travel greater distances, wintering as far south as Colombia and Venezuela. But between now and October when these elegant birds head south, I’ll enjoy them here very much indeed.

Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America – and at larryeifert.com.

Direct link to the article

Larry

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. An email will work.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.