Somewhere in NJ

Stones

2012-01-17T19:48:00.000-05:00

Stone cairns that mark the trail up Arabia Mountain

I have piled stones
on top of one another
for years now
stones of habit
stones of comfort
stones of refuge
stones to settle my heart
stones to mark the days of my journey...

It's not uncommon to find stone cairns used as trail markers. These piles of stone help us find our way. They lead us somewhere and provide a tangible space to pause and recall. They offer a moment to get our bearings and seek direction. They hint for us to stop and listen for the whispering wind.

We may stand at a cairn and remember. We might dream or hope. Maybe we turn within to figure out the meaning behind this pile of stones. What does this place mean? What are its secrets? What are we meant to find here?

Tres leches

2012-01-13T17:29:00.000-05:00

Today's science experiment

Something about baking, as opposed to cooking, makes it much less intimidating to me. And making cupcakes, well... they're just plain fun!

While out and about yesterday (truthfully, I was lost at the time) I stumbled across a little bake shop that had tres leches (Spanish for three milk) cupcakes as their special of the day. I'd always wanted to try this Latin American specialty, so I forked over the $5.00 for two of them.

They were yummy enough (addictive, honestly) that I decided to try making them myself today. I followed the recipe I found here and... oh my goodness, these are so delicious! According to my taste tester, they're even better than the ones I bought yesterday!

Tres leches is traditionally a cake, but it's so super rich that I almost think it's better suited to cupcake form... you know, just a couple bites. These aren't your traditional cupcakes, either, because if they're made right and drenched in milk, you'll want a spoon for all the sweet goodness at the bottom.

: )

Elf orpine

2012-01-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

I know you're thinking, "Oh my God! What IS that? It's red!"

If so, you may be a plant geek like me.

; )

I had the very same reaction when I saw photos of it in my copy of Favorite Wildflower Walks in Georgia after it was gifted to me on my very first weekend here. I couldn't wait to see this unique little plant in person.

Elf Orpine or Small's Stonecrop (Diamorpha smallii) is a succulent that grows on granite outcrops in the Southeastern US.

We first went looking for it back in late September... it's a winter annual, so it was still dormant on that first try. The cool and moist weather of the Georgia "winter" allow it to germinate when conditions are most favorable for the seeds to survive.

The plants are getting ready, now, to shoot up and flower in the early Spring.

(I'm not too sure, yet, when Spring hits here, but I'm guessing they'll flower in mid-March.)

I can only imagine how hot the rock on Arabia Mountain must get in summertime. It makes sense for these plants to sprout, grow, flower and set seed before the summer furnace comes on, I'd guess.

Elf Orpine grows here in shallow depressions in the granite, in very little soil. It's part of a small community of specially adapted plants that grow in the hollows, in something like dish gardens on the rock surface. Fascinating and pretty spectacular to see when blooming, I bet.

Stay tuned.

Art seen

2012-01-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

Photographed today along the BeltLine in Piedmont Park.

Untold stories

2012-01-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of stories I never got around to telling last year... these are just a couple to share...

Waiting for birds to appear on the CBC in January...

A very cold visit to the NJ Meadowlands in February...

Shadows of the March sun at the carousel in AP...

Walking the High Line with a childhood friend in April...

Lunch in Asheville on the way home from W. Va. in May...

Playing with reflections and a new lens on the boardwalk in June...

A couple hours on the beach in July with one of my favorite little people...

Playing tour guide for a flock-mate in August...

A September visit to California...

An October visit to Savannah...

My first (and last!) raw oyster in Apalachicola in November...

Exploring back country roads in December looking for birds...

I hope to be a better blogger in 2012...

One last kiss

2011-11-18T19:23:00.001-05:00

Freckles 2001 - 11/18/2011

I had Freckles put to sleep this afternoon. I'd watched her fade and struggle for the last year or so... ten and a half years take their toll on a bunny even though she was always very healthy. She'd been unable to move around very much and in the last two weeks had begun to lose her balance and not be able to get herself upright once she tumbled over. She had a couple seizures, too, which was just too much for me to bear. A local vet suspected E. cuniculi based on her symptoms, so we treated her for that for a while, but there wasn't any improvement.

Anyway...

It's so hard to make that decision, but it was easy for her. She had an incredibly long life for a bunny and she knew nothing but love. She was the kissiest bunny I've ever known and was kissing me still this morning as we shared a couple last moments of love and comfort. This is my favorite photo of her from many moons ago.

As pet owners, we are so fortunate, I think, to have the option of that final kindness for our pets.

1/365

2011-11-15T20:22:00.001-05:00

New coffee pot, new camera, new life... why not a new photo project, too?!?

I'm trying out the 365 Days Project to take a photo a day for the next year. Sounds pretty easy for someone as camera addicted as me, right? I figure it'll be a sweet way to chronicle this first year in a new place. I also have a new camera - the new iPhone 4S - and it combined with Hipstamatic is the perfect toy!

I'm not sure how often I'll share pics from the project here, but considering the difficulty I'm having with writing regular posts to this blog, if nothing else, a photo a day will at least give me something to blog about. The truth is, I have plenty to blog about, but the difficulty lies in how much to share and what to keep close to my heart. I imagine I'll work that out with time and practice. For now it still feels like too much, as if too many people are reading over my shoulder...

Anyway, about the new coffee pot...

; )

The cheapo Mr. Coffee died yesterday when I was just desperate for a cup...

Coffee this way reminds me of my dad and of camping. I love the smell of it cooking on the stove. It's especially yummy this way, I think, but it takes forever to be ready. So today I snapped a pic while I waited.

Anyone else out there prefer perked coffee over drip-brewed? Any hints for getting the basket contraption out of the pot without burning my fingers or should I go to the garage for that camping tool?

: )

Right brain (fridge) poetry

2011-11-14T15:06:00.001-05:00

I don't know the language, but that shouldn't stop me from playing, right?

; )

I'm sure one of the French grammarians around here will correct me...

I'm feeling inspired by this article... thanks for sending along the link Endment!

Mid-week cat fix

2011-11-09T06:45:00.000-05:00

Everyone else is doing cat-blogging, so why can't I join in the silliness?

; )

This is Belle. She's a pretty cat. She runs to sit in my lap at every opportunity. She kneads my soft belly with her claws. She looks at my bunnies like they're dangerous and might infect her with some terrible cuteness. Her breath smells like fish, usually.

How do cat people stand that?

I'm such a dog person by nature and by choice. I had cats as a kid and as an adult had taken to saying that cats were okay so long as they were other people's cats.

; )

There's a dog park down the street and I'm sort of haunting it in my pining for Luka and some doggy-love. I steal kisses from strange dogs I meet when out hiking. I'm developing a friendship with a lady who has four, hoping she'll let me borrow one from time to time. I carry biscuits in my pockets and am considering a career change to professional dog-walker.

Honestly, don't you think dog and cat people are wired differently, somehow?

Is there some book I can consult to help me understand the strange mincing about on tippy-toes they like to do first thing in the morning? Why the black one chooses to sleep curled up on the dark steps where I can easily trip on her? Why they invite me to pet their furry bellies and then attack my hand with teeth and claws? Why Belle stops mid-step and glares at me from across the room? Why they prowl around in the dark, yowling?

Parting glances

2011-11-07T12:33:00.001-05:00

Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park is ~the~ place to see confusing fall warblers... the trees are young and small so, in theory, you can see the birds easily, down low.

I've had parts of 14 species of warblers there in the last couple weeks:

Most all of this young Common Yellowthroat...

The water-tossed mantle of the Black-Throated Green in last week's post...

The pale supercilliums of many Tennessee Warblers...

The briefest of looks at the yellowish wing bars of a Chestnut-Sided Warbler...

The white "handkerchiefs" on a handsome Black-Throated Blue...

The indistinct dull olive of a young Blackpoll...

(You get the idea!)

Are warblers still passing thru where you are or is it winter already?

Bad bird photo of the week

2011-10-31T09:08:00.000-05:00

Confusing fall warbler edition... happy guessing!

Up close with a Black and White

2011-10-23T21:02:00.002-05:00

I spent a couple hours one morning last week at the Jekyll Island Banding Station; it's Georgia's oldest continually operated station. There's always a nice variety of birds and the folks who run the station, for a couple weeks each fall, are happy for visitors.

This particular warbler, a Black and White, was quite feisty!

And handsome, of course...

Note the "target" penned on the bander's finger... he says it gives the birds somewhere to aim their bites!

; )

Weekend bunny fix

2011-10-22T19:56:00.001-05:00

Peeper has a cat.

(Two, actually.)

Both are mostly afraid of her.

(But they are not above drinking the water in her cage!)

Where the sea lends large

2011-10-21T15:47:00.000-05:00

St. Simons Island is one of the coolest places to spend the low tide hours... the sea retreats almost a half mile and leaves in its place endless tidepools and sandbars for exploring...

There are joys in every moment. Some, like the Black Skimmers that fly past, hold a little tease and leave a wake of longing...

When I'm finished looking for seashells, there's always birds to entertain me...

like these Boat-tailed Grackles playing King of the (sand)Castle

: )

(I forget how noisy they are when I'm away from the coast for too long!)

Royal Terns are grown, but still begging from their parents.

(endlessly entertaining!)

A walk among the birds at low tide teaches me to measure happiness by nothing I can hold... nothing I can catch.

; )

I sneak close on my belly, camera in hand, for a better look at the spot of mustard on a Sandwich Tern's bill...

and squat low over the water with a Willet.

The beach is stretched out as far as it can go as I pause to consider a young Piping Plover feeding at the far end of a tidepool...

Can my imagination make this bird a familiar?

(Could be... though its banded companion was hatched in the Great Lakes area this past summer.)

I keep walking and exploring the quiet changes the outgoing tide has left; entire oceans are moved one inch at a time...

Olema

2011-10-11T12:05:00.000-05:00

It is not drawn on any map; true places never are. ~Herman Melville

We're off to the coast for a couple days; mostly for the required beach fix...

I wonder if this can work out to be a monthly thing, maybe?

: )

I'm sharing a pic from where we stayed on the outskirts of Point Reyes National Seashore last month... a quirky sort of place with hummingbirds and chickens and even a view of horses out the bedroom window...

: )

I'll be back with more from California.

6000 miles*

2011-10-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

There were two days following behind a rental truck that had all my worldly belongings inside. Then a quick trip to the left coast (finally!) to dip my toes in that other (very cold!) ocean.

Baseball games, garden tours, marching band competitions...

(who'da guessed it?)

: )

I'm not settled quite yet; still there are boxes left to unpack.

We're figuring this out... this necessary blending together of disparate lives.

I'm loving the light that pours in the windows here in the afternoons; it lulls me into a nap with a cat beside me.

(A cat?)

(Two, actually.)

Right. Exactly.

; )

I have everywhere still to go.

*give or take a few detours for coffee.

: )

Sorry to have been away for so long...

My mother's cookie jar

2011-08-21T20:29:00.000-05:00

My dad's health had declined so suddenly early in 2004 that he couldn't live alone any longer and my brothers and I were left scrambling to make arrangements for his care. We also had to figure out what to do with his house and all the stuff in it.

The short story is that we shared dad and cared for him as best we could amongst us while we set about cleaning out and selling his house. I don't remember how many 20-yard dumpsters we'd paid for, but still... my attic ended up filled with dad's books, mom's dresses and lots of assorted "stuff" from numerous generations of our family.

I never really dealt with any of that stuff properly. I'm awful about purging my own things, let alone all this sentimental crap... my dad's high school ring, a letter he wrote from France to my mom while they were engaged, her wedding dress preserved in a fancy cardboard box...

What am I to do with any of this?

Life has found me in a place now that I'm sorting through the collections of a childhood and a marriage: my lifetime so far. Some things are easy to keep and others... pfft! It seems impossible to do anything other than cart them around with me until sometime when I can think more clearly about their meaning and real merit in my future.

I've been washing and boxing up my mother's china and sorting through ridiculous amounts of bird-related-kitsch the last couple weeks. I've no idea what to do with the perfectly-preserved wedding dresses worn for two failed marriages, but...

(sad sigh)

This cookie jar, as awful-looking as it is... I know I want to keep it!

: )

Of course it would be meaningless to anyone else, but I remember it there on the counter above the breadbox in the house I grew up in. It's one remnant of my childhood... innocent of any guilty feelings and sense of obligation... I see it and think of Scooter Pies and Pecan Sandies.

: )

In the last couple years I'd used this as a treat jar for my bunnies... appropriate, no? It broke at some point recently and my sweet DexH glued it back together for me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

"My mom" is just an empty title to most people in my life. I have just one friend who remembers her, in fact. It's 30 years since she passed away when I was 11. I can look at pictures of her and still smell her perfumed hug or remember days at the beach as a kid. There is little in my life, now, to make her a real person. This ugly cookie jar was probably meaningless to her... an empty household piece that once belonged to the most important person in my life.

Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I still hold on tightly sometimes. I still think her stuff is as sacred as my memory of her.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I wonder what it is that you all have been carting around with you to remember the people that once loved you? A pink trunk full of tattered love letters? A collection of tools? That set of crystal hi-ball glasses you can't bear to part with, tho you don't even really know what a hi-ball is?

: )

Do tell, please. Lend me some comfort in my state of overwhelmedness.

Plover party

2011-08-20T23:58:00.001-05:00

We had a little potluck party this evening to celebrate a successful nesting season for "our" Piping Plovers at Seven President's Park... there was beer and pizza and homegrown tomatoes with basil and mozarella and homemade wine...

We plover monitors had logged better than 1500 volunteer hours (75~ of them myself) and babysat 4 healthy chicks throughout the beach season.

Wow!

I didn't take very many people pix while out on the beach, but this random beach-goer typifies the amused sort of tolerance of our antics we've trained the public into...

Can't you just see him wondering what all the fuss is about?

Endangered birds... what birds? Where?

: )

Linda is a veteran at this... she and I spent many an evening together at opposite ends of the beach shepherding people away from the chicks.

Click and look closely for two tiny young chicks feeding at her feet!

Marie is another volunteer that I spent a lot of time with... study her posture... she was fierce with young surfers who didn't think they had to follow everyone else's rules on "their" beach...

I had to include this pic of a plover chick running across my beach towel, just because...

: )

Someone on FB linked to an article in just the last couple days that almost suggested that Piping Plovers might do better on very peopled beaches... I wonder if that might not be true...

Public education can be our greatest advantage if we leverage it properly...

Anyway...

The party tonight was fun, but I think we all left wondering what we'll do with ourselves all winter...

: )

Going, going, gone

2011-08-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

The photos I took on 30 July will likely be the last of the baby Piping Plovers...

; (

All 4 babies and their dad were still at the beach on 4 August, but my camera battery was dead...

; (

That evening, while we watched, 3 of them took a very serious-looking flight straight out over the ocean. It was the first prolonged flight I'd witnessed and it looked to me like they meant to head straight for the Bahamas.

; )

They came back, but I've heard since that dad and two of the babies have left for points south. 2 chicks were still around as of yesterday... I hope to get back for a couple last shots, but...

Seven President's Park is the only place in Monmouth County, besides Sandy Hook, that had Piping Plovers this season... and the season was a huge success for our pair!

; )

Bad bird photo of the week

2011-08-01T20:28:00.003-05:00

Swallow song

Swallows are starting to gang up on the wires here in the mornings... I love to listen to their conversations while I wake up with coffee.

I haven't heard a Katydid yet, but I can feel the natural world turning towards Fall.

What about you in your part of the world? Can you see Fall despite the summer heat?

Tell me how you know it's coming...

Suddenly

2011-07-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

Adolescence is, perhaps, nature's way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.

~Karen Savage and Patricia Adams, The Good Stepmother

Teenagers!

A little awkward and gawky... they don't mind boundaries well, anymore, or their parent's alarm call... and they're as likely to amble unawares into a group of Greater Black-Backs as to snuggle sweetly under dad's wing... they nap together during the hottest part of the afternoon and then scatter to the wind to feed as the sun sets.

It's getting harder to keep track of them... harder to tell them apart from their dad at a distance.

It's been a full week since I've seen them... and suddenly they have wings... suddenly they're plovers.

(g)

I will not cry

2011-07-28T23:59:00.001-05:00

There was an evening last week, before the heat wave descended, when the beach was cool and thick with fog, like it is when the Piping Plovers first return in March.

I had to search hard to find my little charges, so completely gray was their world; the sky, sea and sand blending into nothingness.

I've come to know these birds for the little flashes of light that precede them. Their movement, on the periphery of my awareness, is the only thing that gives them away.

They seemed suddenly fearful that evening, aware of my presence and the camera pointed their way. They approached, hesitant in their feeding along the waterline, and skittered past me quickly.

This, too, is a part of their growing up, I guess.

Mama Plover has been gone for almost two weeks now, leaving them in the care of their father. He is even more vigilant since, calling the alarm at my approach and distracting me away from his chicks with a game of hide and seek in the sand.

A part of me wants to play that game with him, to see just where, exactly, he might distract me away to...

Instead I step back and stay away and try to remain separate. These four chicks are not mine. I'm not totally in love with them. I will not miss them, already, before they've learned to fly and are gone as the goldenrod sweeps over the dunes.

I will not cry at their growing up.

Shade x 4

2011-07-24T22:04:00.000-05:00

I was only able to stand a couple hours on the beach in yesterday's ridiculously hot temps, but was glad to see the plover chicks had managed to find some respite from the sun.

: )

Anyone know how much heat is radiated off of beach sand in full sun when air temps are 100+ degrees?

Watch me grow!

2011-07-16T22:14:00.000-05:00

If I'm not careful, I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to "The Daily Plover".

: )

These are some of my favorite pix from the past week. Understand that nearly every photo is a favorite and I take upwards of 100 photos of these babies each time I'm out with them. I'm considering wallpapering my place with them I have so many!

We're still watching over 4 chicks; we try not to hover and worry too close, but if you sit still enough they'll scuttle right past your toes. This afternoon I was sure one was going to invite itself into someone's beach bag!

They're 3 weeks old now and have the funniest tail feathers... little duck butts! I saw the largest of the 4 testing its wings a bit this afternoon in the high dunes... it won't be long before they're flying.

Gulls continue to be a source of anxiety for us all... you need only see one carry away a tern chick one time to understand how quickly a gull can act when the opportunity presents itself. The public is still mostly supportive and cooperative, save for the occasional gang of teenage boys or the dopes on cell phones who think the rules don't apply to them. I've had to use my teacher voice a lot in the last couple days!

At a premium

2011-07-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

This past weekend marked the point in the chicks' growth where all four of them no longer fit so easily under mom/dad plover... so they had to find shade elsewhere!

Here they're hunkered down in the sand at the base of the ropes demarcating the closed area of the beach... in front of them is the 25 foot "buffer zone" we roped off once the chicks hatched. Beyond that is open beach and the blazing sun.

For adult eyes only

2011-07-11T20:01:00.000-05:00

So... this Least Tern flies into a busy colony, finds a single girl looking lonely and offers her a fish...

; )

The fish is waved endlessly about in a teasing sort of way...

Notice how possession of the fish has changed ownership at this point in the dance...

; )

This is what I meant by "flirting with fish"... a slightly voyeuristic pleasure I've been able to enjoy and share with the casual unsuspecting beach-goer over the last couple weeks.

: )

It's been fun to point out the naughtiness that's taking place right under their sunburned noses...

So while a number of Least Terns continue to mate, the chicks of their neighbors are beginning to test their wings to fly for the first time... I'm looking forward to that in the coming week!

At one point late in the afternoon yesterday, something panicked the colony and set all the adults to the air and every last chick running toward the shoreline, toward the boundary of their protected area, toward the open beach and the kite-flying, volleyball-playing, sun-marinated and clueless public.

I'm not quite ready for that, yet.

A coming-out party

2011-07-09T21:16:00.000-05:00

I have pix of plover chicks from this afternoon that are just oozing sweetness, but I'm going to hold them close for a few days...

: )

Instead I want to share pix from last weekend, the Fourth of July, when the beaches were packed with people and the chicks were just barely a week old...

The important thing to know is that we all survived the holiday weekend; despite the hordes of people, the fireworks on the beach, the blazing sun and the occasional thunderstorm.

The parents kept the brood of four chicks close and spent the hottest part of each day in the high dunes.

Often an adult plover gathered the babies into the feathers of his/her breast to provide shade or comfort.

Plover chicks have to feed themselves so they must venture out onto the open beach to feed...

This is a dangerous time and they're vulnerable; everyone is nervous... their parents... us volunteers...

The wrack line was relatively safe, though a parent was always close by to keep anyone from wandering too far from safety...

The volunteer monitors spent our time ushering people away from the ropes and feeding chicks. The chicks were mostly impossible to see at this point, so it took some convincing for people to actually believe there were baby plovers around.

We cheered them on each time they made their way to the waterline to feed.

They're growing nicely and my camera is finding them much easier to focus on... if they ever stand still that is! Watching them feed is like watching a game of "Red Light, Green Light"... remember that as a kid?

: )

These babies can run!

The adult birds are still happy to pose!

*Please note that I haven't cropped any of these pix, so please click to enlarge. Half the joy in this is watching them grow up and a big part of understanding the challenges these birds face is seeing them life-size in their surroundings, I think.

Hide and seek

2011-07-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

Click!

The adult plovers have the curious habit of disguising themselves in the occasional hollow of people's footprints in the sand... it amazes me how skillfully they disappear from sight this way!

Plover dreams

2011-07-05T20:41:00.000-05:00

Piping plovers are running through my days and my dreams. I have stories to tell and photos to share, but little energy...

Trying to be loved

2011-06-28T20:25:00.001-05:00

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

This tree, somewhere in spring in West Virginia, was totally trying to be loved.

: )

Good PR

2011-06-26T22:42:00.001-05:00

"Please watch where you step!" was the catchphrase for today, delivered with a smile to surfers and fishermen and young girls in tiny bikinis. Always the smile.

I'm in the PR business now, for Piping Plovers. Smiles are good PR*.

And there was plenty to smile about... it was a beautiful day, I got to see the sunrise over the ocean, and there were teeny-tiny Plovers afoot. (This is an adult, tho)

The Least Tern colony that the Plovers share was frantic today... I was dive-bombed at least a dozen times. That's not such good PR, but it serves an important purpose.

At some point, midmorning, an adult Piping Plover carried and dropped this half eggshell near the ropes of the closed area. A khaki-colored egg flecked with brown that indicated #3 of 4 had hatched.

At sunset today, after 11+ hours of watching, a chick was finally within camera-shooting distance near the upper wrack line, #4 still hadn't hatched, and I ended the best day at the beach in a good long while.

These babies are so incredibly tiny... like little bugs... like a mirage in the hot sand.

They are their own best PR... how could anyone resist such cuteness?!?

*One thing I love about the group that I'm volunteering with is that they've managed to get the general beach-going public on our side... they ask about how the birds are doing and help us to police the area... it feels as if the community is caring for these birds, which is very sweet.

Tern love

2011-06-25T21:07:00.001-05:00

The terns have been on eggs for weeks now, in all their exposed locations along the shore. Their dedication is inspiring; no less so because of the challenges they face.

The opportunity to watch them, to babysit them - as I've come to call it lately - reveals the little dramas that fill their days. Least Terns seem prone to drama. They continue to court and strut, and flirt with fish, even after the eggs have been laid.

Sometimes they even seem to dance, making even a mundane nest exchange into theater for the careful observer. They're aggressive and anxious, even with their mates. Neighbors are met with outright hostility for the slightest trespass. A gull or Fish Crow overhead sends the small colony into panicked flight.

I've been trying for the past week or two to get a photo of a nest with eggs to share here, but haven't accomplished that yet. The few looks I've had are too brief for a photo, but I can tell you this: the eggs are speckled with rock and sky and summer sands, and with the shadows woven by the beach grass that surrounds them.

Chicks have started to hatch in the last couple days and they are nearly as undetectable as the eggs they leave behind. Until they move, that is! There are two hidden in the tuft of beach grass to the right in the photo above.

Unlike Piping Plovers who are off and running to feed themselves within hours, the Least Terns scuttle around in the dunes waiting to be fed. Theirs is a steep learning curve; before they can learn to fish, these babies must learn to fly.

Until then, they rely on their parents for food and their cryptic coloration to keep them safe. "I am not here" say the markings on their sand-colored bodies, the lines and patches magically drawing your eye away from them. No sooner do you catch sight of one, then, look away and it vanishes.

Please click on the pic above to make it larger. Let yourself fall in love a little... I did!

This pic isn't mine, but I include it for the "Awww" factor.

I've had some really wonderful interactions with beach visitors so far... most are respectful of the closed area of the beach and actually interested in the birds. Fun! I'm looking forward to setting up the scope there one of these days so others can see them and share some of the love.

Mid-week bunny fix

2011-06-22T22:37:00.000-05:00

Freckles on a summer day...

(she's 10 this year!)

Off duty

2011-06-18T19:48:00.000-05:00

I caught sight of this Piping Plover late in the afternoon as she(?) stretched her legs and went off to feed in the surf; she'd just been relieved of nest-sitting duties by her mate. She preened her feathers some, stretched her wings and disappeared into the crowd of sun-worshipers.

Her eggs are expected to hatch in about 14 days!

A craving, satisfied

2011-06-12T22:59:00.000-05:00

As the peak of summer bloom approaches, a foray into the local botanical garden offers something that feels like meditation. With the familiar heft of my camera in hand, I am occupied with wonder. There, just there, tucked into a sunny corner of the demonstration garden, a patch of lavender is busy with bees...

Last summer I was craving a Lensbaby; I will likely spend this summer making many mistakes in learning how to use its wide-angle and bendy-action to best effect. I hope you'll enjoy seeing in a new way along with me.

Mid-week bunny fix

2011-06-09T20:10:00.000-05:00

Suddenly, baby cottontails seem to be everywhere, as do ticks.

Plovers, now

2011-06-02T22:05:00.002-05:00

I'm counting on you all not getting too tired of these fuzzy snapshots of Piping Plovers...

; )

I've been "occasionally" volunteering as a plover warden at Seven President's Park in Long Branch for a little over a month now... meaning I show up there when the mood strikes me and walk the wrack line and look officious with my badge and binoculars and big camera lens...

: )

Until this past weekend, I was monitoring nothing beyond a space set aside for the hope of nesting Piping Plovers. A pair had made an attempt in late April, but hadn't been seen since... I kept showing up anyway when I needed an ocean fix, but really had started to wonder if my time there made any sense.

These birds are notoriously hard to see and survive mostly by being invisible, so I kept telling myself that I just wasn't looking hard enough, you know?

The Least Terns showed up and they were enough of a distraction for a while that I was able to feel like my presence there was important enough. But...

I heard just today that there are two nesting pairs with eggs(!) and those nests have been protected with exclosures...

: )

So now the serious business begins... where's my whistle?

A spectacle, subdued

2011-05-31T22:35:00.000-05:00

Reed's Beach is a tiny bayshore community located about 10 miles north of Cape May. It and other similarly sleepy and bug-infested places along the shores of Delaware Bay find themselves, for a couple weeks each year in late May/early June, at the convergence of diverse and, often, conflicting interests.

Firstly, there is the time-honored claim made by the horseshoe crab. The spring tides attract them to the calm bay shores to spawn and lay their eggs, by the billions.

Drawn specifically to the horseshoe crabs themselves, rather than their eggs, are commercial fishermen. Their value to the biomedical industry and as bait for eel and conch has led to a severe decline in the horseshoe crab population recently.

Next there are the birds that are lured to the bonanza of food presented by the spawning horseshoe crabs... all the seaside regulars show up to eat... gulls, grackles, shorebirds, crows... the beach is a living (and loud!) mosaic of birdlife.

Add the occasional predator to the scene, in this case a Peregrine, and you have the perfect recipe for a birder orgy. Birders love to see such drama and spectacle.

Our claim to this extravaganza, as birders, is a relatively recent one. Crabs and shorebirds were converging here on the Delaware Bay for any number of years without anyone really being aware of it. No sooner had the birding community come to know of it, than it almost disappeared.

Almost!

The star species in this spectacle of birds and crabs is the Red Knot. A robin-sized shorebird that undertakes a world-class migration and stops, midpoint, at Delaware Bay to refuel on its journey to the Arctic to breed.

Scientists and the birding community have watched their numbers plummet year after year. This year, on the lucky day we were there to witness it, some 5,000 had just arrived from Tierra del Fuego. 5,000 sounds like an impressive number until you understand that you're looking at approx. half the Eastern population of a species.

Half of all the Red Knots in my world were spread there on the beach in front of us and still the shoreline looked mostly empty. A Peregrine appeared on the horizon and cut through the panicked flock, reducing it by one, perhaps. One less than half the population landed again, only to be panicked from their feeding, yet again, by a photographer or a fisherman intent on the jetty.

We all stake our claims...

One of the finest and most informative videos I've yet found is available at this link from PBS.

Birds in weird places #1

2011-05-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

Willet on telephone pole...

Wordless Wednesday - Flirting with fish

2011-05-25T23:06:00.001-05:00

: )

So I saw a couple shorebirds...

2011-05-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't had the heart to visit Cape May for the spring shorebird migration for a while now; probably it's been almost 10 years, in fact.

However, the chance to share the spectacle with someone who hadn't ever witnessed it motivated me enough to bear the chance of a broken heart for what's been lost on the Delaware Bayshore in recent years.

I was so hoping to find more than a memory there. And we were lucky to be there on a day when the moon and the tides were in our favor... and there were thousands and thousands of shorebirds!

These first couple pics are mostly Semipalmated Sandpipers, I think. I could spend the next couple weeks trying to separate them from the Sanderlings I think I know so well.

What I hope you'll take away from these pics is the sheer abundance of birds gathered there to feed and rest.

For all the denying I like to do about shorebirds, their beauty is hard to counter. Conveniently, in spring, they're all decked out in their finest and mostly like to huddle together with their own kind, making ID easier. These are Dunlin. Aren't they beautiful?

: )

And we found Red Knots, thank goodness! Counters estimated 5,000 in the area of Reed's Beach that day and while I was glad for our good timing in being there on the day that they were finally "in", the truth behind that 5,000 is not so heartening as it might seem...

More another day.

Plover news

2011-05-17T20:00:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd take a minute to share some pix and an update on the Piping Plovers out at Sandy Hook. I got to spend some quality time with them on World Series Day when all the serious birders were sorting through the gulls and terns amassed at the end of the Fishermen's Trail.

Did I mention that we made two death marches out there that day to look at gulls?

: )

I've decided this season to volunteer as a shorebird monitor at a different site, rather than Sandy Hook. At our site, we don't yet have a pair of nesting Plovers and with each day that passes the chances of a pair nesting there decreases. It's likely that we'll have Least Terns, though, so I'll still have an excuse to hang out at the beach after work a couple days a week.

Sandy Hook is a very productive site and already this season has something like 30 nesting pairs. The dunes are decorated with electrified nest exclosures like this one pictured... each one marking the location of an active nest.

The nest exclosures take the invisible and make it very conspicuous. It'd be hard to stumble upon and destroy a nest so clearly identified in this way. The electrical shock is said to be mild and just enough to deter predators like foxes and gulls from gaining entry. I've read that foxes continue to be a problem, however, as some learn to dig under the exclosure to get at the nest within.

Sadly, a mild shock is not enough to deter malicious people from willfully destroying Plover nests. About-to-hatch eggs were removed from an electrified exclosure at Sandy Hook a couple summers ago. That sad story is available here. Of course no one will ever be caught, but the reward sign still stands at the beginning of the Fishermen's Trail.

Even though it goes against the Plover's natural defense mechanism - being invisible - I'd guess these exclosures are a good thing in that they make the nests out-of-bounds for the casual beach-walker or off-leash dog. For the occasional idiot intent on hurting them, the exclosure marks an easy target.

Working the tide lines and wet sand in wash zones, both adults and chicks will seek the shore to find worms, fly larvae, beetles, crustaceans, mollusks and other invertebrates to pluck from the sand.

On World Series Day I was lucky enough to witness a nest exchange; the male sneaking in to take over egg-warming duties from the female. Later in the day, I found the pair feeding together at the shoreline.

I'm assuming this is a pair, anyway!

How such a small and unassuming bird survives in this harsh and changeable world is an incredible story. For all their dauntless spirit, Piping Plovers always seem to live on the edge of extinction, facing every year fewer nesting beaches, increasing pollution, human development and a growing population of predators. They deserve every bit of protection we can afford them.

And as much camera time as they'll comfortably allow.

: )

World Series of Birding 2011

2011-05-15T20:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was World Series Day here in NJ; a slow migrant day, but we did find some sweet birds. Two special species are pictured here... anyone care to venture a guess at them?

We ended with 116 species for the day, far from last year's best of 143, but not so bad!

Life is old there

2011-05-13T20:49:00.001-05:00

During some "off" time during the first day of the New River Birding and Nature Festival we wandered down a windy single-lane road to the long-forgotten railroad town of Thurmond, West Virginia.

You arrive in Thurmond by crossing the New River over a narrow bridge that doubles as a railroad bridge. It feels pretty old and rickety, but was perfectly safe. I held my breath most of the way across, just in case.

; )

A short walk from the railroad depot, lies Thurmond's old downtown, built right along the railroad tracks. Several old buildings, including a bank with an impressive facade, make up the old downtown.

According to the 2000 census, Thurmond has 7 residents. Back in Thurmond's heyday, more than 500 people lived here and the rail lines carried more than 97 thousand passengers a year, along with 3.5 million tons of freight (most of which was coal).

Making our way back to civilization, we found a small roadside waterfall that demanded a ritual toe-dunking.

: )

8/100

2011-05-13T18:14:00.001-05:00

Late in the week at New River, Beth G. and I had separated ourselves for an hour or so from the "serious birders" in order to photograph the Glade Creek Mill at Babcock State Park. It's a very pretty setting and deserved some time of its own.

So Beth set up her tripod and we scrambled around on the rocks in the middle of the creek for a perfect view of the mill... of course I was distracted the whole time by the fishermen who station themselves along the way. I'm always on the prowl for interesting strangers to photograph, but more often than not, my shyness gets in the way of asking for a photo.

So this guy approached us, once we had given up on photography and decided to go back to birding, to ask us what we were doing there that day and where we were from, etc.

We told him we were there to look at birds and his response was, "The birds are all dead."

Huh?

And he told us about, how, as a kid up at dawn, there used to be a deafening sound of song from birds. He doesn't hear that anymore. Doesn't hear birds singing, at all. So they're all dead.

Huh?

Mind you, his accent was pretty thick, so maybe I misheard him.

; )

In my devilishly charming sort of way I suggested that maybe his hearing was just going... that birds were still singing, but his ears were just too old to hear them, maybe.

; )

This was the moment when I asked for his photo. It's one of my favorites.

This photo is #8 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

The full report

2011-05-10T22:49:00.000-05:00

The full report on the New River Birding and Nature Festival will have to wait a bit; for now there's just these couple images... of perfect roadside wildflowers, of rivers rushing across bared toes, of ghost towns nestled in the mountains, weathered barns along the way, of impossible to photograph birds, memories of twisty country roads, lush hillsides and scenic saw mills, the laughter of an impossible-to-imagine mix of friends, graffiti as art and, finally, a hug between two beloved Flock-mates for the sake of a little bird colored blue like the spring sky.

Yesterday

2011-05-02T20:31:00.000-05:00

I was really tempted by the fried bolony...

; )

Today

2011-04-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

The home team lost, but it was a beautiful day nonetheless.

Told you so

2011-04-26T20:14:00.004-05:00

So I'd been almost patting myself on the back a couple weeks ago, thinking I'd earned my angel wings and all that...

That sort of thinking never turns out well, does it?

I'd managed to orchestrate a move for one of my most difficult mentally ill clients; he's been living in something like a boarding home situation for about 16 years and has wanted out of that climate for most all of that time. He'd call me multiple times a week with a new apartment he'd found or a new real estate agent he'd harassed into helping him find a place... all of which led to nothing but frustration on both our parts.

See, the thing is, he's crazy and has a hard time hiding it.

He has a small army of social workers that've been helping him to live a somewhat independent life... people that make sure he stays on his meds, washes his self and his clothes, pays his bills, doesn't piss off his landlord too much (that's my job!), etc.

We all sort of doubted that he could live on his own, but that's not our choice to make, is it?

So after years of trying and when things with his current landlord finally reached a breaking point, I located an apartment that met his annoyingly particular needs and begged him to let me do my job and get him into it.

Stay out of it! Please! Don't keep calling them with your craziness!

Instead he'd call me everyday with his questions and his rantings, trying to micromanage a process that he didn't need to be a part of. There were a lot of glitches along the way, but I got him in, got the Salvation Army to move him and donate furniture and household stuff. A success, I thought.

I'd hoped so anyway, with fingers crossed.

The ink is barely dry on our contracts with the new landlord. My phone has been eerily silent... I wanted that to mean things were going smoothly.

Today I got the call that his landlord is filing a notice to cease. This is the first legal step in the eviction process.

After just 25 days.

Can I get an, "I told you so"?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Most of my mentally ill clients are blessed with wonderful, caring and understanding landlords. The issues they deal with from their tenants are unpredictably varied. I want to be able to draw some conclusion from my experiences, but I'm not there just yet. It feels like the various support systems that are in place to support the mentally ill are not working very well.

Sandy Hook

2011-04-15T20:22:00.000-05:00

gull wing curve of beach terns
in flocks like sheep standing one-legged
weather vanes into the wind swirls
and eddies of clam shells mussels
chaff of dune grass pebbles drifting
the gentle swells of sand white caps
bottle caps fishing skiffs sand castles
afternoon lineup of jets overhead in the wind
a plastic bag rolls over and over

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Monmouth County Audubon's bi-monthly field trip to Sandy Hook meets tomorrow at the Visitor's Center at 10 am. Laughing Gulls have arrived as have other spring migrants. Join us to welcome them back!

The disappearing

2011-04-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

What do the disappearing know?

Can they change fast enough
with the few genes they have left
to make themselves more seen
in the sand? Will they learn that
what hides them
has become a clever enemy?

Can we read answers in their eyes
as they lead us away from their nests, piping
between flat beach stones piping
the same smooth recorder notes they piped
when no human threat
smashed their last eggs?

Do they
in their few numbers
hide until time
brings them a safe lover
or a place where their future won't be shattered?

What can they know of a final going?

Will they continue to try
to guide us away
because it's the only way they know how?

As if any of us, any fox or truck or boisterous dog could hear that song,
that piper in its low haunt
the possible dirge
of an almost invisible bird.

Some poems

2011-04-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

some poems
you do not write

you wait
hushed
as the soil strains
its urgent whisper

this

listen
and remember
this

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Bloodroot is peeking through the forest floor now; stepped over and unseen by all but those who know to look for it.

The Wiki link above is worth a read for its explanation of myrmecochory that I referred to in this prior post, but which I almost believed to be a fable.

It looked like love

2011-04-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

Although as quickly as it happened, he might just have misjudged his landing...

; )

Garbage on the doorstep

2011-03-29T23:28:00.003-05:00

The Piping Plovers that nest at "B" Lot and other oceanside beaches at Sandy Hook do so under almost ideal conditions, at least until Memorial Day Weekend, when beachgoers arrive.

Before then, they court, bond and set up housekeeping in relative isolation. Clamshells and pebbles populate the landscape; bits of driftwood and beachgrass offer them cover.

Save the occasional wayward Lab that can't resist a dip in their private ocean.

:)

(Dogs are not allowed on oceanside beaches during nesting season. Many people ignore this rule.)

Grrr.

The northernmost tip of Sandy Hook, by contrast, is like another world... beachgoers rarely wander this far; the beach outside the plovers' protected nesting area is littered with debris...

Piping Plovers, Least Terns, Skimmers, Oystercatchers... they all nest here, in privacy, in the middle of the garbage that washes, butt up, on their doorstep.

Far above the tide line, they carve out their nest scrapes among the scattered wrack and shells; they shelter their young in the shadow of discarded tv sets...

rusted oxygen(?) tanks...

car bumpers...

This last is kinda gross - don't look!

and decomposing dogs washed ashore from God-knows-where.

(I never did find any Plovers here... but the 8-10 reported recently had plenty of places to hide!)

I think we owe them better; I believe the cost of privacy for endangered and threatened species shouldn't be as high as this!

Every bit of garbage ends up somewhere... we all know this. A lot of NYC trash ends up at Sandy Hook. This needn't be so.

:(

Clean Ocean Action sponsors regular beach sweeps... the next at Sandy Hook is scheduled for April 30, 2011!

(Our newly returned Osprey will thank you for a more beautiful landscape over which to hunt flounder!)

Piping Plovers deserve at least as clean a beach as we expect for ourselves, don't you think?

Sea crows

2011-03-26T23:45:00.000-05:00

Trying to be inconspicuous

Oystercatchers are funny birds; so boldly patterned, their calls so strident, yet they're so shy!

Staying put, for the moment

You wouldn't think it, but you could easily walk past an oystercatcher without noticing it. Except that they give themselves away at the very last second.

Complaining that I'm too close for comfort

Their nerves get the best of them when what they really need to do is stay put and stay quiet! Instead they advertise with loud calls and bright bills.

Stalking ahead

All afternoon today I was pushing a pair ahead of me as I wandered at Sandy Hook looking for Piping Plovers.

Wordless Wednesday - puddle wonderful

2011-03-23T23:18:00.001-05:00

starlings enjoying the thaw

My spring

2011-03-21T22:15:00.004-05:00

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten... You could hear "the rush of mighty wings," but oftener a velvety rustle, long drawn out... occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover.
--Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

The warming March sun and a faintly whistled "peep lo" lured me to Sandy Hook this weekend to greet the newly arrived Piping Plovers. Courting Woodcock the evening before, an Osprey making a bee-line up the coast and the season's first Phoebe completed the day.

Happy Spring!

Wordless Wednesday

2011-03-16T20:12:00.001-05:00

*smirk*

Considering Scaup with Crossley

2011-03-14T23:16:00.001-05:00

So there's been this huge flock of Scaup resting at the base of the Oceanic Bridge between Rumson and Middletown the last couple weeks... quite the spectacle for local folks who never pay attention to such a thing.

Busy with tennis and lunch dates, you know.

*snark*

I was glad to find people there, glad to find "normal" people curious about this big conglomeration of ducks that seemed to appear from nowhere.

The great mass of them were Scaup sp. with a couple Red Heads mixed in, Brant and Ruddies at the fringes of the flock.

While I "know" that these are mostly Greater Scaup, I wondered what wisdom Crossley might have to offer...

Lesser on the left... Greater on the right

Greater is known to form large flocks in winter in coastal estuaries.

Check.

Frequently mixes with very similar Lesser Scaup.

Durn.

Sometimes obvious, but at other times separating from Lesser a real head-scratcher.

Yep.

Iridescent green head often appears black, but rarely purple.

Check!

I finally saw that purple iridescence on a couple Lessers on Lake Como this weekend and it's so very obvious when the light is right...

(one hardly needs to pay attention to the bulgy cheeks of the Greaters that Crossley mentions!)

I'm enjoying sorting through the local waterfowl with the new Crossley Guide... have you bought a copy yet? What do you think?

Wigeon

2011-03-10T21:16:00.002-05:00

It's been a great couple of days to be a duck!

I shot this female wigeon on a much bluer day, feeding in the grass beside Lake Takanassee.

The places we go back to

2011-03-08T20:17:00.000-05:00

Photo by Nina

To some, the mention of West Virginia conjures images of moonshine, hillbillies and mountains leveled by coal companies. The string of small, almost threadbare towns one finds tucked into the hills in the southern part of the state only reinforces the reputation of the place as somewhat benighted.

Yet I keep wanting to go back.

There are no life birds for me there. As a birder, you can understand the equation necessary between limited travel funds and the possibility of life birds added to one's list.

Birds are not really why I go.

There's some other appeal in the homespun spirit of the New River Birding and Nature Festival that draws me back late each Spring. It's run in such a way that it does end up feeling like summer camp for birders, as Bill Thompson says about it. It's funny to me now to remember a similar feeling before I ever even went to this festival for the first time.

The field trip groups are kept wonderfully small; intimate, even, compared with most popular birding festivals. The trip leaders, besides being experts, are personable and enthusiastic and actually learn your name. Profits from the festival benefit local schools.

These are important things in my book.

This is the perfect festival for The Flock, too. They spread each of us out among the daily field trips - probably so that no one group will be subjected to the bunch of us together - and give us the chance to spend evenings together at dinner and the presentation. Then they secret us away for the night in a farmhouse in the middle of some marsh where no one can hear our silly antics.

; )

I've made lifelong friends there. I've seen gorgeous birds and beautiful sights shrouded in mist. There are hillsides drenched in wildflowers. There's biscuits and strawberry jam at every breakfast. A porch swing and Susan.

Is there any wonder why I go back?

There's still a couple openings for this year's festival... join us! If not this year, do put it on your list for someday soon.

Show Jersey some love!

2011-03-02T21:18:00.002-05:00

(and, for the record, I too love the "city of lights" along the Turnpike mentioned at 5:10!)

Rabbit intelligence

2011-02-27T23:11:00.001-05:00

If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit. ~Robert Brault

Bad bird photo of the week

2011-02-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

Scaup taking wing...

So I happened to come across this article about a local duck phenomenon and made it a point to find my way there today, in my traveling from one end of the county to another to see clients. For many years this was THE place to go locally for huge numbers of Scaup, but in the last couple of years, not so much. I'd drive by, over the Oceanic Bridge hopeful, but nothing the last few years.

I found them there today, but completely panicked when they all took off at once from the water...

It was really beautiful, though.

(Darn camera!)

; )

Ruddies

2011-02-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

There are finer, more carefully focused and composed photos from a chance encounter with a group of Ruddies the other day... but this is my favorite because the details give away so much about this little duck... the bluish bill, the outstretched neck and jaunty tilt of the tail.

They're usually easy to find in the neighborhood ponds and almost always bring a smile.

: )

My go-to book for historical bird names has a very long list for the Ruddy Duck; many of which are hysterical...

Dumpling Duck, Daub Duck, Deaf Duck, Fool Duck, Sleepy Duck, Butter Duck, Brown Diving Teal, Widgeon Coot, Creek Coot, Sleepy Coot, Booby Coot, Ruddy Diver, Dun Diver, Sleepy Brother, Butter-Ball, Batter-Scoot, Blatherskite, Bumblebee Coot, Quill-tailed Coot, Heavy-tailed Coot, Stiff-tail, Pin-tail, Bristle-tail, Sprig-tail, Stick-tail, Spine-tail, Dip-tail, Diver, Dun-bird, Dumb-bird, Mud-dipper, Spoon-billed, Butter-ball, Spoonbill, Broad-billed dipper, Dipper, Dapper, Dopper, Broad-bill, Blue-bill, Sleepy-head, Tough-head, Hickory-head, Steel-head, Hard-headed Broad-bill, Bull-neck, Leather-back, Paddy-whack, Stub-and-twist, Light-wood-knot, Shot-pouch, Water-partridge, Dinky, Dickey, Paddy, Noddy, Booby, Rook, Roody, Gray Teal, Salt-water Teal, Stiff-tailed Widgeon.

Edward Howe Forbush (1917) explains that many of the common names stem from the difficulty in hunting them...

(Stub-and-twist is a personal favorite!)

Goosethaw

2011-02-20T19:58:00.000-05:00

A few warmish days here had the skunk cabbage showing signs of life.

What's not to love about this man?

2011-02-14T20:08:00.002-05:00

Image courtesy Princeton University Press

He's handsome, smart, likes birds, has that incredibly cute accent, not to mention the humungous camera lens...

(which, btw MevetS, he handholds!)

Besides the avant-garde fashion sense (look at that blue jacket!) he's also, clearly, very brave. I imagine him to be risking life and limb to photograph Harlequins out at the end of the Barnegat jetty, don't you?

Have I mentioned that he's just published a book? And a book about birds, no less!

(swooning)

My momentary infatuation is directed towards Richard Crossley and his Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds. I'm planning to spend this Valentine's evening curled up with it by candlelight, maybe with a glass of wine.

Like with all tender new love, all I can say is, "Wow!"

and,

"He's sees birds just like I do!"

and,

"Where has this field guide been all my life?"

and,

"Gosh... it's so sexy when he uses alpha codes!"

; )

It really is a cool guide; his approach is unconventional and that's exactly what excites me most about it. I've not ever been one to rely on a field guide. I collect them, yes. But use them? Hardly.

This is a book I want to spend time with and get to know better. I think Richard Crossley can make me a better birder.

*Please note that, while Princeton University Press has kindly provided me with a free copy of The Crossley ID Guide to review, this is not my proper review. I promise to do that once I'm over the puppy-dog stage of love and can see things more clearly.

**Please also note that I have no personal relationship with Mr. Crossley, nor do I desire such. There was a brief interaction at the Cape May Hawkwatch this fall involving the ID of a sparrow, however. I am happy to report that Mr. Crossley did not laugh me off the platform at that encounter.

(Imagine the pressure of having THE RICHARD CROSSLEY toss a roadkill sparrow your way and demand that you ID it, in hand, before he'll even make eye contact with you.)

Thanks for that experience Wren!

Have a listen as he describes the book (oohh that accent!)

And Happy Lover's Day!

Secret garden

2011-02-13T21:48:00.000-05:00

A couple more pics from the other day at Terrain - highly recommended for anyone suffering from the late-winter blahs...

Our lunch spot, happy with sun.

Set in a greenhouse, there is flowing water, antique stained-glass doors and plenty of sunlight!

There's an attached shop that sells all manner of pretty things.

More pretty things!

They also sell plants, but I was barely even tempted, considering my lousy luck with houseplants.

Wandering around with my camera I found lots of things, like the winter sky reflected in silver plant misters.

; )

What I see

2011-02-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau

What do you see?

; )

Sun soaked

2011-02-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

This is the photo I took at the beginning of our visit - a simple bread baked in a clay pot, a mason jar of ice water and the late winter sun streaming across the table where we gathered for lunch.

Every moment in the sun is a gift these days and I think we all might've stayed in that sun-drenched spot and happily chatted the afternoon away. We - myself, Julie Zickefoose, Heather from Wayne PA (who many of us know from her sweet comments on our blogs) and Heather's friend Linda met for lunch and a visit to the Wyeth collections at the Brandywine River Museum.

Julie is in town to speak at Longwood Gardens. Heather was our local guide and she picked the perfect spot for lunch - sun soaked and fragrant with the scent of growing things... a place to nourish winter-weary bodies and hearten a growing friendship.

More another day!

*%^$# rabbit!!

2011-02-09T23:41:00.000-05:00

One of Freckles'greatest joys in life is digging through her litterbox and spreading the contents far and wide.

Ickk!

Somehow, I'd imagined that at 10 years old, she might've outgrown this miserable habit, finally.

Wrong!

Do your bunnies love to dig, too? How do you keep it from driving you absolutely f-ing nuts?

Help?!?

Along 30A

2011-02-07T21:46:00.001-05:00

Slow down, you're here.

Lift

2011-02-04T22:54:00.000-05:00

Comments a couple months ago on a post I wrote about falconry led me to Rebecca's blog and most recently to her book, Lift. A memoir, it shares the lessons learned in the practice of training a Peregrine Falcon.

I'm not very far into the book, yet, but expected from reading her blog that I would enjoy it. My impression, just 80-some pages in, is that she writes well and passionately about her falcon. Already she's spoken to one of the questions I raised in that earlier blog post, on training her falcon to fly to a lure:

"The falcon and I look at each other, both startled. Then he bows his head slightly over the bird in his feet, snaps the neck and looks back up. He allows me to meet his gaze, seeing deep into his falcon's eyes and I understand that I could keep this predator on a line forever, but he will never be my pet. Over that shared look our relationship changes just a bit, because suddenly, we both grasp an obvious truth. I am looking into the eyes of a wild peregrine. It's so soon, only ten days, but it's time to let him fly free."

Yes, it is dangerous to be bound to something that can break your heart.

She's lost her bird once already to the sky and reclaimed him, changed, after only five hours on his own. I'm looking forward to learning how their relationship continues to develop.

Year of the Rabbit!

2011-02-03T21:31:00.001-05:00

Look out bunnies... now I have the perfect excuse for dressing you up in silly outfits!

; )

Social work puzzlers

2011-02-02T21:41:00.000-05:00

Some things I've been pondering lately, courtesy of my clients:

How can you afford two flat-screen tv's, but not a kitchen table?

Isn't the appointment letter I sent you, a month in advance, that says I'll be there between 9am and 3pm on such-and-such a day enough notice so that you might at least be out of bed and dressed when I show up at your house... at say, noon?

And without some unidentified male hiding from me under the bed?

I hate when they do that to me!

Should I really have to explain to you why it's inappropriate to urinate in public?

Did you imagine, when you said your son was, "away with his dad" that I understood they were both housed in the same correctional facility? Geesh!! You made it sound like they were on vacation together, rather than both locked up on drug and weapons charges.

Did you think I wouldn't figure out that you're sleeping with your landlord in lieu of paying rent? Really?

Really?

I could write a book, I tell ya.

Sea mice

2011-01-31T21:48:00.000-05:00

also Painted Duck, Mountain Duck, Rock Duck, Lord and Lady, Squealer.

"Harlequin, well named! Fantastically decorated, but still a thing of beauty! Delightful in color, elegant in form, graceful in carriage, rightly are its little companies called the "Lords and Ladies" of the waters. This is the loveliest of the Sea Ducks, but its beauty is reserved mainly for the cold and inhospitable North and the wave-lashed rocks of isolated ledges in the wintry sea."
--Edward Howe Forbush in Birds of America (1936)

Monmouth County Audubon's annual frozen pilgrimage to see the Harlequins at Barnegat Light was last weekend. We had a very small group... probably due to the especially frigid temps.

It's one of my favorite places in the world, but the walk out the jetty to see the Harlequins is not for the faint of heart. We were blessed that day with a gentle wind out of the right direction and a low tide... so the boulders that make up the mile long jetty were mostly dry and free of ice.

Still... I mostly walked along the sand beside the jetty... looking for Sparrows and Snow Buntings and Horned Larks and leaving the dangerous stuff for the foolhardy members of the group!

The jetty was constructed to protect the shoreline and prevent sand from filling in the inlet. It and a parallel jetty on the north side of the inlet are designed to keep the channel from the ocean to Barnegat Bay deep and navigable.

If you're lucky, as we were, a couple Harlequins will be feeding in tranquil waters at the very beginning of the jetty where there's a concrete walkway and a guardrail; oftentimes it's necessary to walk the full length of it to the roiled waters and slippery rocks at the very end to find them.

We walked all the way out anyway because the jetty and its boulders attract a variety of marine growth (like mussels which the Harlequins feed on) and which otherwise attracts fish, which, in turn, attract more birds like Loons, Scoters, Eiders, Mergansers and Long-tailed Ducks. Purple Sandpipers, Dunlin, Ruddy Turnstones and Sanderling populate the mossy crevices of the jetty.

Even if there weren't birds to look at, one could hardly be bored with the constant threat of a broken bone or a concussion with any misstep!

; )

I'd imagine the Harlequins to be something of a boon to the local beach communities which are otherwise mostly deserted in the winter. Someone has to serve chocolate-chip pancakes and hot cocoa to all us shivering birders!

Barnegat Light is, for those who love the sea and the immediate shore, a very special place.

Any ideas to explain the "Sea Mouse" name?

Bad bird photo of the week

2011-01-30T22:55:00.000-05:00

Another bird on a wire.

: )

"Up yours."

2011-01-28T23:59:00.001-05:00

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne

; )

But it sure can be pretty!

(Same scene as yesterday, at Allaire State Park, only 5 feet or so to the left.)

Sometimes

2011-01-27T20:58:00.000-05:00

Sometimes? The only thing to do is lift your face to the warm kiss of the sun. (This after reveling in the pure and simply joy of digging out from under yet another snowstorm.)

Strange bedfellows

2011-01-26T23:33:00.000-05:00

All the little ponds here along the coast are frozen solid, mostly. Each has at least some open water and that's where all the birds are congregating. Fletcher Lake between Ocean Grove and Bradley Beach had this Great Blue Heron (who looks scarily hungry for some Mallard flesh!), many Mallards, a couple white domestic ducks, a Pintail(!!!), a Wigeon and a Black-crowned night heron sleeping along the shoreline.

A couple blocks away in Spring Lake we found a single Snow Goose feeding on the postcard-sized lawn of a beach house with a small group of Canada Geese.

Strange.

I find myself inclined to worry about wildlife when everything is frozen and snow-covered, but remind myself that wild things are good at surviving. They do much better than I ever could, for sure...

On learning that crossbills were still in the neighborhood

2011-01-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

In Long Branch, we stand beside a maintenance shed
of the county park service,
with its four-wheel drive pickup trucks
its piles of road salt
and its border of Japanese black pines.
We spend frigid minutes
shivering in the wind,
the sun warming our faces
and the hint of a warbled song
drifting down in a shower of winged scales.

With tear-stained cheeks and icy fingers
we point past the chain-link fence
to a pile of dirty snow
and a small reddish bird with crossed bill,
quenching its thirst.

Beyond the small group of latecomers, I watch
the green expanse of the Atlantic,
the gray gull, small and perfect as a toy,
that glides across the horizon.
We head back to the warm car;
our pursuit complete,
the promise of cocoa
or an overpriced Windmill hotdog,
with chili and cheese.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I can't say anything about the Red and White-Winged Crossbills here at the Jersey Shore that hasn't already been said, other than that they're still in their expected place at Seven President's Park. For whatever reason, I waited until the coldest day ever to go see them. Neat birds... certainly worth the frigid temperatures.

Crossbills are the only family of birds that have crossed mandibles; what might look like a deformity is, in fact, an adaptation for the bird's feeding habits. Crossbills insert their closed bill into the side of a pine cone and then open it, tearing out the scale and exposing the seed within, which is then scooped out by their odd-shaped tongue. Aside from the quiet trilling, it was the sound of pine cones being torn open that gave away the Crossbills' presence and allowed us to spot them in the shadowed pine trees.

These birds have been present at the park for nearly a month and those of us that venture over to see them must present something of a curiosity to people in the neighborhood... enough that they drive by to ask what in the world we're looking at.

: )

Crossbills wander widely in the winter months, as do birders looking for rarities.

The paranoid poet

2011-01-15T23:36:00.002-05:00

Between the poet and the grimacing woman
on a beat-up blue bicycle,
lies a blurred wasteland.

She hasn't always been this person.

Her squalid apartment
the letters scrawled in mad ink
that fizz by themselves in my in-basket

the dreamy smile
that makes her look, suddenly, young.

Walking the tightrope with her
ignoring the drop of the past,
avoiding looking down
to recognize the loss
and spinning, headfirst
into dizzying sadness.

The fear that I, too, might unravel
and spin off into nothing.

- - - - - - - - - - -

CM is a published poet, a librarian in a past life and a client of mine. She recently admitted that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and fears that she'll be evicted, now that her landlord knows the truth about her. She insists that her mental illness doesn't affect her ability to write poetry.

I worry about her a lot, visit her often and get almost weekly letters from her. Once or twice a year, she'll send me a poem. I treasure those.

The man with the "golden voice" has me thinking of such things... I imagine a government social worker, somewhere, cheering him on, knowing this was coming, all along.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Photo from the Howard Finster collection at the High Museum in Atlanta. I was there recently to see the Dalí exhibit and... wow!

A year in pictures

2011-01-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Probably it's time to move on, but I'm not quite finished yet... just a few more 2010 shout outs and I'll be done. I promise.

: )

Haiku with bunnies*

2010-12-31T17:02:00.000-05:00

Year's end,

all corners

of this floating world, swept.

- Matsuo Basho

(there's still dustbunnies in the corners, tho!)

*a new occasional series

I thought of you

2010-12-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

There's no better way to spend a day than to have your face kissed by the ocean's gentle mist as you walk along the shore. Especially if your heart is full from a day packed with laughter and the presence of people who bring great joy. And especially if your heart is full from longing for family and friends whom you miss dearly, near and far.

I thought of you as I took this photo. I held you in my heart and imagined you were next to me. Yes, you. And you. And you, too.

You know who you are. And if you don't, you should.

Bad bird photo of the week

2010-12-29T21:15:00.000-05:00

Care to venture a guess?

: )

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

The Carousel House in Asbury Park NJ

Balancing the year

2010-12-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

"The short days are past us now... thus the year balances its accounts. In our latitude we know that each year brings the time when not only the candle but the hearth fire must burn at both ends of the day, symbol not of waste but of warmth and comfort. The sun cuts a small arc far off to the south and shadows and cold lie deep. It is for this time that we, if we live close to the land, lay up the firewood and the fodder. Now we pay for the long days of Summer, pay in the simple currency of daylight. Hour for hour, the accounts are balanced.

And yet, the short days provide their own bonus. The snows come, and dusk and dawn are like no other time of the year. We come to a long Winter night when the moon rides full over a white world and the darkness thins away. For the full-moon night is as long as the longest day of Summer, and the snowy world gleams and glows with an incandescent shimmer.

Year to year, we remember the short days, but we tend to forget the long nights when the moon rides high over a cold and brittle-white world. Not only the moon nights, but the star nights, when it seems one can stand still on a hilltop and touch the Dipper. Who would not cut wood and burn a candle for a few such nights a year?"

-Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

OK astronomy geeks... with tonight's solstice and lunar eclipse... is tonight the longest and the darkest night ever?

How many of you mean to stay up to see it?

(shivering at the thought!)

Image from here.

It's all cold up along the boardwalk...

2010-12-19T22:22:00.000-05:00

Tick-tock...

Lines across the sky

2010-12-18T21:18:00.001-05:00

Bald Eagle over Forsythe NWR

"He draws great lines across the sky; he sees the forests like a carpet beneath him; he sees the hills and valleys as folds and wrinkles in a many colored tapestry; he sees the river as a silver belt connecting remote horizons. We climb mountain peaks to get a glimpse of the spectacle that is hourly spread out beneath him. Dignity, elevation, repose, are his. I would have my thoughts take as wide a sweep. I would be as far removed from the petty cares and turmoils of this noisy and blustering world."

-John Burroughs, Far and Near

I had my life Bald Eagle at Forsythe (Brig) many years ago... I can hardly go there today without remembering that first glimpse of this magical bird.

Where was your first?

The cranes! The cranes!

2010-12-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

A couple young Whooping Cranes arrived today at St. Marks NWR in Florida to spend the winter... led there from Wisconsin off the wings of an ultralight... how cool is that?!?

You can learn more about their incredible journey at the Operation Migration Field Journal.

I wrote some more about the Whooping Cranes at St. Mark's here.

Ternabout

2010-12-14T23:57:00.000-05:00

For the longest time, I just didn't "get" terns. Nowadays I can't seem to get enough of them!

For the beginner, I think they're hard to separate, but the more time I get to spend with them, the clearer the contrasts become.

Distinguishing Royal (foreground) from Caspian (background) had felt so abstract until I saw them on the beach together at Sapelo... even out of focus, the Caspians are burly by comparison and there's no mistaking the red of their bill for that of a Royal.

Note: I'm catching up with posting some old photos that I hadn't yet blogged... these from the beach in October are warming my chilly bones.

Remembering warmer days

2010-12-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

Waiting for the ferry to Sapelo

A spectacle in black and white, brown and blue

2010-12-08T23:39:00.001-05:00

The promise of hundreds upon hundreds of Snow Geese drew me to Forsythe NWR this past weekend...

Their handsome white or shades of gray in the blue sky, the black wing feathers, pinkish bills and feet...

All delightful against the winter browns of the salt marsh.

It's difficult to watch any one, as there are so many flying across the marsh from one impoundment to the next...

An Eagle on the horizon doesn't cause the expected panic among them; they sit tight instead and travel across the marsh en masse, at their leisure and to my delight.

*The coastal marshes of NJ are a significant wintering ground for Snow Geese; their numbers will grow into the (hundreds?) of thousands before our waters freeze and they're forced further south to warmer climes. I'm glad for the spectacle of them, here, now.

: )

Here's looking at you

2010-12-04T18:25:00.000-05:00

: )

Ducks around town

2010-11-27T21:49:00.001-05:00

I'm lucky to live along the coast and in a place where ducks like to be in winter; each town has its' own little pond just a block in from the ocean and each seems to attract a particular variety of waterfowl...

Traveling from one pond to the next is half the fun; discovering what has shown up since last weekend is the best part. Gadwall are a nice find and under-appreciated, I think... that speckled zig-zaggeyness of their bellies is gorgeous, no?

I have trouble remembering the names of each pond or distinguishing one from the next along the circuitous route I follow by habit from town to town; I know to expect Ruddy Ducks here, but

I think of this as the Night Heron Pond (Silver Lake, I think) because there's always at least a dozen of them roosting in the shrubbery on a little island in the middle of the pond. I can sit down out of the wind and watch them materialize before my eyes. We counted 14 today without really trying and that number will increase as it gets colder.

Hooded Mergansers seem to be everywhere, on every little pond, but getting a decent pic of one is forever challenging.

Lake Takanassee is a favored spot for Ring-Necked Duck (not here last weekend!) Canvasbacks and in a good year, Red Heads. There's always gulls to sort through, if you're so inclined (I'm not) and the light in late afternoon is sweet for photos of the Mute Swans that seem to be taking over there.

(ick.)

The day ends at Sandy Hook with the wind, watching Gannets feeding over the hunched-up shoulders of some very cold-looking fishermen, Manhattan in the distance and kite surfers on the bay.

Mmm...

2010-11-24T23:51:00.003-05:00

All the chatter at work the last few days has been about the upcoming holiday meal and who's going where and cooking what.

It's a pretty diverse crowd and I've enjoyed hearing about everyone's plans for Thanksgiving as well as their family traditions. My own family is pretty typical, I'd guess... a huge meal on the fancy china, but the star of the show is always the variety of vegetables we prepare; we always go a little overboard in that way. It's hard for me to settle on a favorite, but Brussels Sprouts certainly top my list.

Is that weird?

(It seems like most everyone I talk to hates Brussels Sprouts!)

My answer is that if you don't like 'em, you must not be cooking them properly.

; )

So tell me... what's your favorite thing to eat on Turkey Day? Mashed potatoes piled high with butter? Or mixed with whipped turnips? Creamed (yuck!) onions? Lasagna? Arroz con gandules?

Bad bird photo of the week

2010-11-21T20:26:00.001-05:00

Cross-eyed (and beakless!)

; )

The plumes blowing in the breeze are kinda sweet, tho.

Criers of the winter to come...

2010-11-19T22:35:00.000-05:00

Tundra Swans over Cape May - October 2010

Fishing the sky

2010-11-12T23:58:00.001-05:00

"What a needy, desperate thing to claim what's wild for oneself..."

Can a kept hawk ever be a *happy* hawk, I wonder?

Falconers will say their birds are well-loved and are cared for properly. I don't doubt that.

Educators who work with non-releasable birds will say that many people who otherwise wouldn't have the chance to interact with a wild thing are touched by the lives of these captive birds. I don't doubt that, either.

But keeping wild-caught birds for falconry? Purposely fishing the sky for a healthy hawk to catch and keep as one's personal hunting partner?

How is that right?

Are captive-bred birds somehow less desirable for falconry?

Anyone know?

I'm as guilty as the next person of enjoying the "horse and pony show" offered by the opportunity to be up close with a wild bird of prey, but I can't help wondering that their souls aren't somehow diminished by the contact; by being kept.

Non-releasable birds have to be thought of in a different context, I guess, because of their potential as champions and ambassadors of a species; were it not for them most people would never have the chance to see a Bald Eagle or a Screech Owl at arm's length. Or to understand the impact we humans have on them.

But falconers and their healthy wild-caught birds?

I'm not so sure how I feel about that.

My issue is not with falconers, exactly. Falconry sounds like a very cool thing to do... there was a period of time where I read everything about falconry that I could get my hands on. Dan O'Brien's books were particularly alluring to me... his stories of hunting grouse and ducks on the prairies of South Dakota with a dog and the constant sky...

Falconers are due credit, I believe, for the role they played in saving the Peregrine Falcon, among other species. The individual falconer with a couple birds that he flies on weekends as part of a greater lifestyle does not trouble me.

My issue is with those who turn to *education* to support a habit of acquiring birds. Maybe they need an educational component on their license to increase the number of birds they're permitted to keep. I have no idea, really, but I've seen a number over the years who just don't seem to be doing the right thing by the birds in their care.

Maybe I'm just being overly sentimental.

"... to be wild means nothing you do or have done needs to be explained."

Photos: Harris' Hawk at an upstate NY *raptor center*
Quotes from "Hawk" by Stephen Dunn