The Daily Outside Wednesday: Tide and True Trivia, Social Lives of Birds
Wednesday’s Daily Outside climbs a mountain, studies the air, tests its tidepool knowledge, and eavesdrops on bird society — a day devoted to looking a little closer at the natural world and discovering it’s far more complicated, connected, and fascinating than it first appears.
A plaza, a peak, and a ranger with one good story for the road
Mount Rainier National Park — Paradise Plaza Program
Wednesday, June 24
11–11:20 a.m.
Jackson Visitor Center Plaza, Paradise
Mount Rainier National Park
Free program | Outdoor ranger talk | All ages | Park entrance fee may apply
The Paradise Plaza Program is the national park version of a well-timed pause. Visitors gather outside the Jackson Visitor Center, the mountain looming nearby, and a ranger offers a short talk on whatever slice of Mount Rainier feels most alive that day. Maybe it is glaciers, wildflowers, weather, wildlife, volcanoes, climbing history, or the long relationship between people and Tahoma. The format is simple, stationary, and brief enough to fit between hikes, viewpoints, snack breaks, and the inevitable visitor-center shuffle.
What makes it work is the immediacy. This is not a distant classroom lesson about a faraway place; it is a 20-minute conversation held inside the landscape being discussed. Snowfields, ridgelines, meadows, moraine, weather, and wandering visitors all become part of the scene. Check with the Jackson Visitor Center front desk for the day’s topic, then step outside and let a ranger add one more layer to the view. Paradise is already impressive. A little context makes it even better.
More info: Mount Rainier National Park
Tiny particles, big consequences, and what Tacoma’s trees can tell us about the air we share
Tacoma Tree Foundation — The Air We Breathe with Dr. Ailene Ettinger
Wednesday, June 24
Noon–1 p.m.
Online Webinar
Free | Educational webinar | Registration required
Most of us notice air only when something goes wrong. Wildfire smoke arrives. Traffic hangs heavy over a roadway. An air-quality alert flashes across a weather app. Yet every day, invisible particles move through Tacoma’s neighborhoods, affecting health, quality of life, and even life expectancy. Tacoma Tree Foundation’s latest educational webinar explores that hidden world through the work of Dr. Ailene Ettinger, a senior research ecologist with The Nature Conservancy of Washington whose research examines how air pollution, urban environments, and ecological systems intersect.
The presentation will focus on air-quality research conducted across Tacoma, examining how pollution levels can vary dramatically between neighborhoods and why some communities experience greater exposure than others. Participants will learn about the sources of airborne pollution — from transportation and industry to wildfire smoke and fossil fuel combustion — and how urban trees can play both direct and indirect roles in improving environmental health. The discussion also explores practical questions: Which Tacoma neighborhoods are most impacted? How did researchers gather the data? And what actions can communities take to create cleaner, healthier air for everyone?
Dr. Ettinger brings a wide-ranging scientific background to the conversation, with research spanning Pacific Northwest forests, tropical pollinator communities, amphibian habitats, urban ecology, climate change, and even killer whales in the Salish Sea. Her work combines rigorous ecological science with real-world conservation challenges, making complex environmental issues accessible and relevant to everyday life. Whether you’re interested in trees, public health, climate resilience, or simply understanding the city around you a little better, this lunchtime webinar offers an opportunity to see Tacoma through a different lens — one carried on the air itself.
The webinar will be recorded and posted to Tacoma Tree Foundation’s YouTube channel approximately two weeks after the event for those unable to attend live.
More info: Tacoma Tree Foundation
Tidepool facts, prize baskets, and the Salish Sea finally getting its pub quiz
Harbor WildWatch — Tide and True Trivia Night
Wednesday, June 24
5:30–7 p.m.
7 Seas Brewing, Gig Harbor
2905 Harborview Dr., Gig Harbor
Free | Trivia night | Volunteer and member gathering | Friends and family welcome
Harbor WildWatch spends most of its time helping people meet the Salish Sea on beaches, docks, low-tide walks, and marine life programs. Tide and True Trivia brings that same ocean curiosity indoors for an evening at 7 Seas Brewing in Gig Harbor, where volunteers, Steward Club members, friends, and family can test their beach-going knowledge without needing rain boots, tide charts, or the ability to identify a crab molt in the wind. Teams will compete for a prize basket, bragging rights, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing a suspicious amount about shore crabs, sea stars, eelgrass, intertidal etiquette, and whatever else the Harbor WildWatch crew decides to ask.
The event is designed as both a thank-you and a community gathering for the people who support Harbor WildWatch’s work across the South Sound. It is free, no RSVP is required, and participants are encouraged to form teams, bring guests, and lean into the organization’s motto: “Learn. Have Fun!” The setting helps. 7 Seas gives the evening a relaxed harbor-side feel, making it a good way for volunteers to meet each other, new supporters to connect with the organization, and ocean-curious locals to discover that marine education can, in fact, come with delightful prizes and a pint nearby.
More info: Harbor WildWatch
Flocks, feuds, and the surprisingly complicated social lives happening above our heads
Tahoma Bird Alliance — The Social Lives of Birds with Joan Strassmann
Wednesday, June 24
6–7 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Free | Virtual author presentation | Registration required | Donations appreciated
Birds often seem to have life figured out. They gather in flocks, migrate together, raise young, sound alarms when danger approaches, and somehow coordinate movements that would challenge a football team, a city council, or most group text chains. But as author and biologist Joan Strassmann reveals in her new book, The Social Lives of Birds, avian society is every bit as complicated as our own. Cooperation, conflict, competition, family dynamics, collective decision-making, and survival all play out daily among the creatures occupying forests, shorelines, backyards, and skies around us.
In this virtual presentation hosted by Tahoma Bird Alliance, Strassmann explores the fascinating social structures birds have evolved across the globe. Participants will learn how communal nesting, cooperative breeding, flocking behavior, and colony life provide safety, warmth, protection, and shared resources. Yet bird society is not all harmony and synchronized flight. Living in groups creates challenges too, from competition for food and mates to disease, parasites, and social conflict. The presentation examines how birds navigate those challenges and what their behavior reveals about the broader principles of social living.
Strassmann is uniquely qualified to tell these stories. An award-winning behavioral biologist and Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, she has published more than 200 scientific papers on behavior, ecology, evolution, and social organisms. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of several leading scientific organizations. Yet one of the pleasures of The Social Lives of Birds is how accessible it makes cutting-edge science, transforming decades of research into stories that deepen our appreciation for the birds we encounter every day.
Whether you’re an avid birder, a backyard feeder enthusiast, or simply someone who has wondered what exactly is happening inside a flock of starlings twisting across the evening sky, this free webinar offers a chance to spend an hour looking at familiar birds through a more informed and fascinating lens.
More info: Tahoma Bird Alliance
Afterward, meet up at Peaks & Pints
By day’s end, you may have stood beneath Mount Rainier listening to a ranger explain a piece of the mountain’s story, learned how air quality shifts from one Tacoma neighborhood to the next, tested your knowledge of tide pools and sea stars over trivia, or discovered that birds spend an astonishing amount of time navigating friendships, rivalries, cooperation, and conflict.
Turns out the natural world is every bit as social, complicated, and interconnected as the human one.
Settle into a pint of our house Lumberbeard Brewing Cut-Off Flannel IPA or a tulip of Finnriver Buckhorn Dry Cider and compare notes. Maybe the conversation drifts toward glaciers, urban forests, invasive species, bird colonies, or the surprising realization that cleaner air, healthier shorelines, and thriving wildlife all depend on the same thing: paying attention.
Wednesday’s adventures may begin on a mountain, a shoreline, a computer screen, or a trivia team, but they end in the same place — a deeper appreciation for the world just outside the door and the people working to understand and protect it.
That’s worth a toast.
LINK: The Daily Outside explained
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
