Up close with a Black and White

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

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

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

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*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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