Bandits and Henchmen

A group of bandits and henchmen invaded our yard today. Their appearance is an annual event, at least for the bandits, who tend to arrive in early autumn, hang out for 10-20 minutes and then leave. In contrast, I can see the henchmen year round. Of course, I am not writing about people, but about birds. The bandits are cedar waxwings, a gray brown bird with a sporty, almost mohawk crest. A black mask covers their eyes giving them their nefarious appearance. The henchmen are dark-eyed juncos, in particular the Oregon form with their conspicuous black hoods and handsome little pink bills.

Cedar waxwing - From Wikipedia
Junco - photo by Tom Grey, birdweb.org

As usually happens, the waxwings appeared suddenly, with a flurry of wings and high pitched whistles. They had come to dine on berries on our black hawthorns. Our hawthorn, the native Crataegus douglasii, is about 35 feet tall with 1-inch-long thorns. I always appreciate when the waxwings arrive because they tend to decimate the berries, which are abundant enough to make our path a mess.

Waxwings are fun birds to watch through binoculars as you get glimpses of the shimmering red wingtips and yellow tipped tail. They are active birds flitting from branch to branch, stopping periodically to swallow a berry, though I watched far too many birds drop the berries right back down on to our path. With at least a dozen birds flapping and winging around, it looked as if the tree was going to take flight.

One Mr. Forbush once described the birds this way. “Like some other plump and well-fed personages, the Cedar Waxwing is good-natured, happy, and tender-hearted, affectionate and blessed with good disposition. It is fond of good company.” He also reported on the birds surprising habit of passing a cherry along from bird to bird as they sit in a row. No one knows why.

Although I can see the juncos any day of the year in our yard, and regularly when out hiking, I still enjoy watching them bounce around. They were formerly known as common snowbirds, and are more common in winter, when they descend from the mountains and foothills. Like many small birds, they seem to be in constant motion, hopping about the ground in search of seeds, berries, and arthropods.

Now they are all gone. The yard is quiet. The hawthorn has fewer berries. I await the return of the bandits.

House on a Hill: Seattle Regrades

Over the past few days, several people have sent me a link to this wonderful set of Seattle then-and-now images by Clayton Kauzlaric. What he does that is unusual is to create a composite with an historic shot woven together with a Google street view. Images include the original shoreline, parades, and regrades. Perhaps the most iconic is this one of a house formerly at the corner of Sixth and Marion. The historic photo is from the regrade of Sixth Avenue, which occurred in 1914. As reference, it is about eight blocks south of the southern end of the Denny Regrades, which took place in 1903, 1906, 1907, 1908 to 1910, and 1928 to 1930.

Sixth and Marion Blend by Clayton Kauzlaric

Entrepreneur Joseph F. McNaught built this house around 1881. At the time, “the older men of Seattle shook their heads at this foolish whim,” wrote Margaret Pitcairn Strachan, in a story about the building in the March 4, 1945, Seattle Times, in part because the house sat on a “tremendous hill, along a cowpath.” McNaught’s home originally faced Sixth Street (later Sixth Avenue), with horse stalls and carriages to the south toward Columbia Street. In 1890, a regrade of Sixth left the house perched high above the street. When the house was lowered to the new street level it was turned ninety degrees, to face Marion.

McNaught House in all its glory - Seattle Times

Dr. P.B. M. Miller and his wife Eva eventually bought the McNaught home from speculator Bert Farrar and converted it into a rooming house, which they named the Ross-Shire. Their children owned the building, known variously as the Ross-Shire Apartment, Ross-Shire Hotel, and Hotel Ross Shire, when the main regrade of Sixth took place in 1914. In this image from January 1914, you can see an excavator at work on the hill holding up the Ross-Shire. On the corner of the building is a sign advertising the Ross-Shire Cafe.

Ross Shire Cafe, January 1914 - City of Seattle Municipal Archives

Eleven years after the regrade, Harvey M. Todd bought the house. He made significant changes to the original structure, adding apartments, sleeping rooms, and a “modern hot-water heating system,” as well as lowering the yard to allow light into basement apartments. According to Paul Dorpat, the building ended its life when I-5 was built. By this time, it was part of a complex known as the Marion Hotel.

Later in the life of 603 Marion, a bad preproduction from the Seattle Times

I have one final comment and I don’t mean it to be too critical of the wonderful images created by Clayton Kauzlaric but I am a bit compulsive about trying to get the facts straight. His image faces the wrong way. The McNaught house was on the southeast corner of Sixth and Marion and Kauzlaric’s image puts it on the northeast corner, or at least he has the image facing northeast. He may have done so for artistic reasons—the composite is framed beautifully—but to see a correct now-and-then shot, you can go to Paul Dorpat’s web site, which has some additional information about McNaught and the property.

Material for for this story comes out of research I have done for my new book on Seattle – Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography.

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