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Though the Navy radio station doesn’t broadcast at 1 million watts continuously, it does have its own direct line of power from Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Jim Creek’s transmitters dwarf those of typical FM stations, which range from a few hundred to 50,000 watts. The station’s radio towers are capable of consuming 1.2 million watts, which could power about 500 homes over the course of a year. At the time, it was the most powerful radio transmitter in the world, and it still remains one of the strongest. Jim Creek’s radio transmitter first began broadcasting in 1953, during the height of the Cold War. We sat and talked about children’s activities, wild critters and very-low-frequency radio waves. He was joined by Higgs, the naturalist, as well as a sizable entourage of staff, including the manager of the recreation site, the director of programs at Naval Station Everett and a press officer. On a recent sunny day, Loverink sat at a picnic table outside the recreation office, dressed in olive drab coveralls emblazoned with service patches. Loverink is in charge of the physical facility, which is managed by Naval Station Everett – while the transmitter itself is run by a pair of acronym-heavy military jurisdictions: the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station, Pacific (NCTAMS PAC) and U.S. military’s communications infrastructure. When he’s not birdwatching, Loverink, a one-time Navy helicopter pilot, oversees this\ recreation center that doubles as a key component of the U.S. “There was this streak of something,” Loverink said with a disarming grin, “and then it disappeared into the trees.” Matthew Loverink, said he thinks he spotted one of these top-gun birds while out on a walk at the facility last year. “They go very fast – the only comparable bird is a peregrine falcon.” “They actually make a sound like a little jet,” she added.
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Though they spend most of their lives in the water, they’re also speedy flyers. Those big trees are the perfect nesting habitat for murrelets, which are currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and avoid predators by building their nests high in the branches of the ancient trees, says Higgs. Some of those trees, which include western hemlock, Douglas fir, western red cedar – and one of the largest existing stands of Sitka spruce in the Puget Sound basin – are over 1,000 years old and up to 12 feet in diameter. Higgs notes that while much of this Navy property has been logged, 275 acres of mature forest in a gorge near Twin Lakes has been permanently protected since the late 1990s. This area has been pretty well hammered, so it’s a really special forest,” she said. “It's one of the last remaining patches of Puget Sound lowland old growth. Jim Creek is also a lovely place with salmon-laden streams and centuries-old forests where cute, mysterious seabirds known as marbled murrelets build their nests and raise fluffy little chicks.Īlicia Higgs, natural resources manager for the Jim Creek facility and several other Navy properties on the West Coast, said there are significant ancient forests here that make great habitat for murrelets.