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Street Smart Naturalist

David B. Williams

A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com

society & culture personal journals

All Episodes

8:19

Mr. Bun in Seattle

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/08/14

For many years, I have referred to every rabbit I see as Mr. Bun. I have no idea why but do know that this year I have been seeing more Mr. Buns around my fair city and its surroundings. They are sprinting across roads, hopping through yards (ours included), gallivanting in parks, flitting in fields, and skittering into smeuses. They’re eating garden vegetables, getting squished by cars, and getting eaten by other urban residents of the furred and fowl kind. Curiously, no one has surveyed the

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7:52

Global Warming: A Screed

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/08/07

“We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore.” Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture - 5/8/2025‘Do you believe in climate change?’ is not really a meaningful question, because climate change has existed as long as the Earth has existed. Vivek Ramaswamy, self-described conservative American nationalist - 9/19/2023“That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it, no matter what’s happening.” Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense -

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6:11

Purple Flowers of Hope

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/07/31

I went for a run the other day and nearly got thwacked to bits. Nothing terribly serious, mind you, but a good reminder of the exuberant abundance of one of the region’s, and, in fact, the northern hemisphere’s most prolific plants: fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium). They grow widely in our front yard, throughout the Cascades, circumboreally, and up to 16,000 feet in elevation in the Himalayas. Fireweed also thrives in disturbed habitat, such as adjacent to trails in lesser visited Seattle

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7:47

Follow the Red Brick Road

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/07/24

One of life’s simple pleasure is bumping along. I was able to do this the other day, on an unusual road, bumping over brick on my bike. About 200 yards long and located just off SR-522 in Bothell, near the notorious Wayne curve, the red road is the lone remaining section of the Bothell Boulevard. When it opened in 1914, the Seattle P-I described the boulevard’s “scenic beauty…[as] the equal of any in or near this city.” By 1934, though the brick had been replaced with asphalt, except for this short

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6:28

Lost Seal? No, Just Hungry.

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/07/17

Apparently not all pinnipeds read guide books. At least that’s my conclusion after seeing a harbor seal on Saturday on my weekly ride with my pal Scott on the Centennial Trail. The spotted, gray seal was almost 18 miles away from the nearest harbor, up the Stillaguamish River. As we usually do, we stopped on the old railroad bridge over the Stilly, near Arlington. Below, the water was clear and as low as we have seen it: 560 CFS compared to the maximum we have seen of more than 60,000 CFS. The

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5:47

A Naturalist at a Museum

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/07/10

As I have been regularly writing, nature is all around us. All one has to do is slow down and pay attention, and the natural world will show her beauty. During our trip to Boston last week, I had the pleasure of seeking out plants and animals and rocks in one of my favorite environments: museums. Whenever I visit one, I like to see how artists incorporate something that means so much to me—the natural world—into their art, whether as the subject or as the medium. In Boston, we spent about four hours

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6:37

Memory Lane

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/07/03

We recently spent some time in Boston, where Marjorie and I lived between 1996 and 1998. It was a trying time then. We had moved from Moab, Utah, a geological paradise, to a place where the sum total of my geological knowledge was Plymouth Rock. For the first many months I had no connections to the place, to the natural world that inspired and grounded me, as it had done in Utah. But then one day I was on the Harvard campus looking at Harvard Hall, built in 1766. At its base was a rock that

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6:34

Birders Gone Bad

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/06/26

What is it with birders and birding in fictional TV and movies? They seem to go out of their way to make poor observations and incorrect identifications. I know you might be shocked but there’s an infamous ornithological blunder in the 2000 remake of “Charlie’s Angels.” The angel played by Cameron Diaz ferrets out the evil villain’s lair by a bird she hears in a recording. Ms. Diaz claims the bird, supposedly a Pygmy Nuthatch, “only lives in one place—Carmel, California.” Tell that that to the

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4:39

Time and Tide Waits for No One

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/06/19

The narrow band between high and low tide is Puget Sound’s most protean ecosystem, where the rhythms of existence fluctuate with the twice-daily expansion and contraction of our inland sea. For thousands of years, those pulses of water dictated life for the Sound’s human inhabitants. Where people lived, how they traveled, and when they could find food all depended on knowing the tides and how they affected the movement and location of water, plants, and animals.Today, understanding the tidal cycle

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6:27

We All Live in a Watershed

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/06/12

Seeps. Springs. Rills. Brooks. Creeks. Streams. Rivers. A web of water tendrils entwines the landscape and provides habitat, transfers nutrients and sediments, creates travel corridors, and bestows beauty. Veins. Arteries. Neural Networks. Life blood. Life. What are rivers but breathing, living centers essential to the health of the environment for the more-than-human and human world we all inhabit.I was prompted to write this newsletter by reading Robert Macfarlane’s new book Is a River Alive? Not

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6:44

Snow Flakes of Cotton

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/06/05

Tis that time of year when cotton starts to snow the landscape. I always enjoy this annual falling of little white clusters out of the sky, particularly since we see so little real snow falling in Seattle. Neither cotton nor snow, the white “flakes” come from our local cottonwood, the black cottonwood, Populus trichocarpa. The specific epithet provides a hint to the plant’s legendary, or notorious for some, feature, as trichocarpa means “hairy seed,” from the Greek thrix, a hair, and karpos,

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6:35

Too Hot! Goats to the Rescue

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/05/29

Yesterday the temperature peaked at 82 degrees in Seattle. That ain’t right. Our normal high for May 28 is 68 degrees. So, like any good Seattleite in such a dire situation, I panicked and sought out whatever cooling I could find: cold drinks, our basement, and stories of cold, such as people freezing to death and resorting to cannibalism on mid-19th century Arctic expeditions. Being the kind and kind of writer I am, I’ll spare you the details of the Arctic diet and instead relate another story of

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7:11

Twelve Ways of Seeing Blackbirds

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/05/22

Today, I’d like to highlight a local favorite of mine: the Red-winged Blackbird - Agelaius phoeniceus. * First Name: Red-winged would be a wonderful description, if it were correct. The problem, at least in regard to reality, is that red only applies to the bird’s shoulder patches. An older, first name used to be red-shouldered but apparently those who name birds eschewed the logic and decided to exaggerate the spread of red.* Surname: Blackbird is also apt, as the birds are all black. At least the

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5:34

Flying Fish

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/05/15

My story last week about the herring caught by the Osprey reminded me of another flying fish tale. This one is even nuttier, with longer lasting consequences.If you were standing on the shore of Lake Washington on September 15, 1938, you could have seen 2,000 flying trout. They came from a low flying plane, which dropped the fish fingerlings in a rectangular metal can attached to an old gunny sack fashioned into a parachute. The fish bombers experimented during several flights, varying the size of

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7:01

Top Wild Sights of Seattle

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/05/08

The other day at one of my talks for my new book, Wild in Seattle, someone asked me what was the wildest thing I had seen in the city. I thought it was a great question and, prompted by my big brother, I decided to come up with some of my favorite wild sightings in Seattle.Flying Fish - At Alki Point with a pal, we saw an adult herring passing over us in the talons of an Osprey, who disappeared to the north. Then the Osprey and herring returned back over the water, followed by a Bald Eagle. The

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6:58

Bird's Eye Seattle: 1884

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/05/01

On July 14, 1884, a short article appeared in the Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer. It noted that artist H. Wellge had just completed “the finest view of Seattle ever taken.” The image was of the bird’s-eye character, measured 14 inches wide and 33 inches long, and would cost $3 apiece, or 12 for 20 bucks. “It will be a splendid thing to send abroad to advertise the town.” Bird’s Eye View of the City of Seattle, WT would be one of more than 150 panoramic bird’s eye views that German-born Henry

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7:20

Slug Fest

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/04/24

This past weekend, Marjorie and I and friends went walking in a splendid, wooded area, Taylor Mountain. Like other forested spots near Seattle that have been protected by the city, county, state, or federal government, it is haven of beauty. Biggest were the holy trinity trees—Douglas firs, western red cedars, and western hemlocks—many so large I couldn’t wrap my arms around them. We debated if they were original growth and concluded they were not. Back in the day, no logger would have left behind

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7:37

Rejoicing in an Orwellian Spring

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/04/17

Alas, it’s back to me after last week’s lovely interlude by Marjorie.“The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London.”George Orwell - Some

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5:22

Ode to My Naturalist

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/04/10

Hello from Marjorie, the wife often referred to in David’s writing. In honor of David’s birthday week, I offered to write a newsletter and give readers some insight into the man behind the Street Smart Naturalist. Back to normal next week.Someone recently said to me, “Gosh, David must be fun to live with.” This was during a walk when he spotted a hawk perched on a rock cliff 75 feet above us. The rest of us barely saw the rock, much less the bird.Yes, living with a super-naturalist is fun. He

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4:13

"Wild in Seattle" is Published!

Street Smart Naturalist ·

2025/04/03

I am excited to announce that Wild in Seattle: Stories at the Crossroads of People and Nature is now on sale in bookstores. My first thanks goes to Mountaineers Books for all of their hard work in creating this beautiful book. My second goes to Elizabeth Person for her wonderful, whimsical watercolors. The book is worth buying simply for her illustrations.Wild in Seattle is an outgrowth of my first three years of the Street Smart Naturalist newsletter. It brings together 48 of my favorite essays

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