A couple of weekends ago we dashed out on a last-minute boat ride with my uncle John around Ebey Island outside of Everett, a city just north of Seattle. John is a maritime attorney and his love of waterways extends to boat ownership (a fishing boat, mind you, not a luxury cruiser). When my mum called me with an invitation to join John and two of his grand kids (Vireo's cousins), we said "yes!" immediately.

Ebey Slough is a waterway adjacent to industrial Everett which connects the confluence of the Skykomish and Snohomish rivers into a delta of narrow channels among farmland and, increasingly, development. It's a Shangri-la (one of my favorite expressions) of bird-life as is so often the case for river deltas. Seeing it from the water-side perspective was a special chance to view not only bird-life but industrial, maritime detritus, as well as feel the brackish air of fresh water meeting salt.