Sunday, June 3, 2018

Drove up to Seattle

My son wanted to show his wife the Aquarium in Seattle so we drove up there today. Though it rained some today tomorrow it's supposed to be nice. So, we got up there before the traffic was bad but found out that Interstate 5 was closed just before Seattle so we diverted to 99 into town and went to the Aquarium that way. So far so good. The aquarium was fun for my son and his wife and my grandson and I was amazed at just how different that Sea Otters are this far north. They are much smaller around the San Francisco bay area than here. Here they are sometimes 5 or 6 feet long. Also, the Sea lions and fur seals are much different breeds than you see further south in the San Francisco area. Also, the sea anemones are green and pink whereas where I live they are mostly brownish and maybe a little bit green but not pink or bright green like they are up here. Another difference is puffins ONLY have orange bills for mating season. The rest of the year they look completely different.

Note:  It is only (without traffic) about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Portland, Oregon to Seattle by the way. So, if you leave most days by 9 am or 10 am you can breeze into Seattle before traffic gets bad by 3 or 4 pm weekdays. end note.



Sea anemone - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anemone

Sea anemones are a group of marine, predatory animals of the order Actiniaria. They are named after the anemone, a terrestrial flowering plant, because of the ...
Order‎: ‎Actiniaria
Phylum‎: ‎Cnidaria
Subclass‎: ‎Hexacorallia
Kingdom‎: ‎Animalia

Puffin - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin

Puffins are any of three small species of alcids (auks) in the bird genus Fratercula with a brightly coloured beak during the breeding season. These are pelagic ...

Amazingly these are all Puffins but the ones with out the orange in their bills aren't in mating plumage. They look completely different when they aren't mating. I had seen these birds as a child in Seattle not in mating plumage before from age 4 and before but never saw them in mating plumage in person until  today. One mating pair at the aquarium were mating while we were there today because this is mating season now.



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