Shorebird reflections

In a world of distant horizons, the lone shorebird is little more than a windblown fragment, too easily lost under sun and sky.

It must be that they find comfort in the relative anonymity a flock provides: the sense of direction, a defense against predators, the company of other wanderers; a solidarity of purpose.

I find that I enjoy a mixed-species flock of shorebirds in a way that isn't possible when confronted with a lone bird... the solitary shorebird practically implores that it be identified by name, but the magic of them, for me, lies in the wheeling mystery of the flock.

The delight in shorebirds comes not from any individual bird (unless its an Avocet or a silly-spinning Phalarope) but in a mudflat alive with thousands of birds and the subtle mosaic of tones it presents; black streaks of folded wing feathers, drab sandy grays and stony browns... all of them more striking in pattern than in color... cloud shadow, grass and earth, the glint of late-day sun on salty water.

When suddenly they snap together like a magnet in the air or scatter to the blue of four directions, I'm mesmerized.

Their movements... bent airbrushed wings skimming overhead, wheeling and turning on some imperceptible cue, any one member's slight adjustments in direction only serving to highlight the unity of the whole. They appear like a dark cloud detached from the sky showing the gray of their backs, then vanish into the glitter and glare as they wheel to display the white of their underbellies, then reappear at some distance away, as if by magic.

Let others ponder over their ID; I'm happy to know it of course, but it does little to affect their magic in me.

Skywatch Friday: Jamaica Bay Birders

The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is one of the most important urban wildlife refuges in the US and is renowned as a prime birding spot where thousands of water, land and shorebirds stop during migration, with more than 325 species having been recorded in the past 25 years.

Our group of ten or so, minus those couple who were afraid of a little rain (Hi Patrick! Hi John!), grew and mingled and shrank throughout the day. This pic was taken early, before we were very muddied and before the storm clouds had passed us by.

Visit here for more skywatch posts.

Your empty office

Dear Kathy,

I snuck away during your retirement tea this afternoon for one last look at your office. Already it was mostly empty of any trace of you, but for the umbrella on the desk.

I wonder if you did that; looked back on your way out the door. Or did you just walk, with a smile and your balloons and that silly plaque the county gave you, to do whatever it is you'll do now that you're not doing this anymore?

How does it feel to look back on thirty-five years, I wonder?

It goes that the best things said come last. I hope those words reached you today and that you leave knowing the respect and love we all have for you. That your example and your influence, by means of the mentoring you've provided for many of us professionally or personally, extended well beyond the confines of your sunny corner office.

In the span of years I've known you and worked for you, my perception of that office and of you has reshaped itself a number of times. I'm glad now to be far from those first nervous days when I was a trainee in your unit, seated in rows just outside your door like a schoolkid, under your watchful eye. To have come from that, to where I was invited in these last couple years with the door closed behind me, like a trusted friend, is possibly the greatest compliment you could ever pay me.

Thank you for that and for your confidence in me. Thank you for being there with Deb and Linda and Cathy M. to hold me up when my dad was dying and I didn't know how to manage it all. Thank you for quietly letting others help me when I needed help and couldn't get out of my own way. Thank you for encouraging my move to a promotion in social work without making me feel too guilty for leaving my *home* in Unit 425. Thank you for welcoming me into your office as a friend, even though you were my boss. Thank you for cheering me on, in this, now.

Your office is empty. I'm lingering at the door with a rush of words, too late.

Mid-week bunny fix

Peeper on the job!

Peeper the bunny isn't the friendliest of rabbits and she would just as soon box and growl as allow herself to be petted; unless you have a handful of strawberries, that is!

But like most any bunny, she's a busybody! The alarm guy's work mat spread across the floor and covered with assorted tools and a multitude of plastic packages and little doodads proved just too much for her curiosity and she had to investigate and climb all over everything. She even chinned a couple of his power tools!

;-)

I had to put her back in her cage when she started trying to run off with his stuff, though. Ever watch a bunny try to run with a cardboard box in her mouth? It's the funniest thing, really.

Telltale

Their cries echoing a melancholy end to the carefree days of summer, shorebirds concentrate at a few scattered places along their migration routes to fatten themselves up and bewilder those birders foolish enough to attempt separating one species of nondescript shorebird from another species of nondescript shorebird.

Yellowlegs, thank goodness, have those telltale yellow legs.

;-)

In addition to the wealth of shorebirds, Jamaica Bay offers up-close looks at birds that are so often viewed at a great distance across the haze and shimmer of a mudflat. The difference at Jamaica Bay is that you're standing in the midst of the birds, on the mudflat yourself... fighting for purchase among the muck as it threatens to swallow you whole or maybe just steal a shoe should you misstep...

I saw that happen to a couple people the other day... and have pics to share!

;-)

I've avoided ever going to Jamaica Bay, mostly because it involves driving through Staten Island**, but it was a great day and I couldn't resist the chance to meet some other bird bloggers who were there as well. I almost think I've learned to ID a couple sandpipers, too. Plus there was an Avocet which makes any trip worthwhile, even one through Staten Island.

More another day.

**The Staten Island thing is a family joke, but most anyone from NJ can imagine what I mean.

Landmarks

How about some Borland? It's been a while...

A man must pause now and then, when the storms of human passion have filled the sky with the dust of emotions, pause and wonder if the old landmarks are still there. So, when the heat of the day is past and evening comes, a man steps outdoors to look, to feel, to sense the world around him.

These late August evenings, a moon well into its first quarter hangs high in the west, where it has been at this phase ever since there was a moon. North, as the dusk deepens, stands the polestar, and beneath it and to the west a few degrees hangs the Big Dipper, just where it has always been on a late August evening. To the east is the Great Square of Pegasus, old and fixed in the firmament when the Greeks first knew it. And overhead flies Cygnus, the swan.

A man listens, and the scratchy stridulation of a katydid rasps at the dusk. There is an answer, then another, and soon there is a chorus. As always, in late Summer, as it was before man was here to listen. And the crickets chirp and trill in the meadow grass, as they have chirped and trilled for several eons. From the edge of the woodland comes the call of the whippoorwill, over and over, repetitious as the years but reminding man that birds were here and flying before man came and walked on two feet.

A breeze moves down the valley, and the leaves whisper in the treetops. Trees that count the centuries, a breeze that curled around this earth when the hills were mountains. The leaves whisper, and a man listens, and he knows that there still are landmarks.

--Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Pic is of one of my landmark trees... a hackberry I'm told.

Zen thoughts with bunnies

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.

~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Midsummer minutiae

I love tiny, tiny flowers and the littlest details revealed with a close-up. I haven't discovered the skill yet, with a very fussy macro lens, to reliably get all of the flower in sharp focus, but instead let the camera choose its point of interest. Sometimes we agree on what's interesting, but often not. I liked the rich brown scaly head below the petals of this Yellow-eyed grass, but the camera had other ideas.

The barely pink urn-shaped flowers of Bearberry are a treat in mid August. This plant was obviously confused; flowering when it should be bearing fruit. The ant on the underside of the most forward leaf distracted both me and the lens.

I'm not sure which of the Bladderworts this is, but the effect of the water and the angle of the sun is pretty psychedelic! I can't ever produce this effect on purpose, but I'm tickled when the lens makes it happen by surprise.

Sweet pepperbush and its tiny fragrant flowers... as abundant as blueberries in the Pine Barrens, but not as tasty.

;-)

I was up to my ankles in mucky water when I took this one, but a close-up of Horned bladderwort requires that, almost. I love the flower's yellow spur. There's some 11 species of bladderworts in the Pine Barrens, yet I've only ever seen 2 or 3 of them.

Thanks to Steve for use of his macro... I needed a close-up flower fix!

Exploring the Red Road

If yesterday's pic wasn't a clue... I went on a pretty intense botany trip to the Pine Barrens on Sunday. MevetS was nice enough to invite me along, but probably didn't properly prepare me. Sure, he said to bring lunch and bug spray and the directions led me to an unmarked sugar-sand road in the middle of the Pine Barrens, but...

Seeing this really scared me. Adding to the fashion faux-pas of tucking their pants into their socks, these folks were using packing tape around their ankles to further geek themselves out/protect against chiggers.

Chiggers? Huh?

Yesterday was brutally hot and the pines in the pygmy forest did little to provide any shade from the sun, but we wandered and wandered, with the promise of a 'wetland' somewhere along the way.

After a couple hours walking in the blazing sun, I was fantasizing about a cool blue pool of water and cabana boys, but...

These people were all about plants... and most of them weren't even flowering plants!

;-)

I've learned that plant people, as they progress and learn more, get really into sedges and rushes and grasses. This is kind of too much for me just now, kind of like shorebirds and gulls are too much for me as a birder.

I need colors and blooms and flashy stuff that catches my eye!

Digging up a sedge to be able to identify it based of the shape and fibrous nature of its roots?

Feels too much like aging gulls based on primary molt or whatever.

;-)

TMI, especially when it's 95 degrees and you've been walking for hours looking for the pool - which turned out to be nothing more than a mucky stream we had to bushwack our way through.

I'll share a couple pics tomorrow of the few flowers we did manage to stumble across. I sound like I'm making fun, but mostly I'm almost awed by the knowledge and enthusiasm I witnessed with this group and wonder how long it'll take me to be ready to tackle (and get excited about!) sedges (or gulls).

;-)

How to 'really' see a sundew

Me, with my face in the dirt.

With a hand lens, of course!

;-)

Photo by MevetS

Clearwater

The Clearwater Festival is an annual event; the state's largest and oldest environmental music festival. I usually always find an excuse to go, even if it's just for an hour or so to stroll among the vendors or listen to the music at the circle of song (pictured here).

I first remember going when I was in high school and back then the festival took place at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, right along the bay. A much nicer setting than where it is now, I think.

Anyway... there's always an interesting mix of people to make for fun people-watching: hippie-types straight out of the sixties, kids with their faces painted like butterflies or flowers, today I even saw a young couple, multiple tattoos and body-piercings among them, strolling along with a rather large and vocal parrot on the woman's wrist.

;-)

A coffee story

I read the sweetest little book by Julia Alvarez yesterday evening... A Cafecito Story: A Story of Love, Coffee, Birds, and Hope.

;-)

My coworker Linda, mi pana, is from the Dominican Republic and has been trying to sell me on Julia Alvarez for months. Mostly she writes something like historical fiction that spans the divide between her childhood in DR and her adult life here in the US. I enjoy the poetic way she often writes and this little book suited my short attention span of late.

It tells the story of one man's love affair with a good cup of coffee and how the challenge of growing coffee under the shade of trees, where songbirds come to sing over the ripening coffee beans, ultimately inspires an organic shade-grown coffee company and a community. Cafe Alta Gracia is the name of that company and their coffee is available for sale through the Vermont Coffee Company.

Anyone tried it or have a favorite to recommend?

Blue-eyed grass

BLUE-EYED grass in the meadow

And yarrow-blooms on the hill,

Cattails that rustle and whisper,

And winds that are never still;

Blue-eyed grass in the meadow,

A linnet's nest near by,

Blackbirds caroling clearly

Somewhere between earth and sky;

Blue-eyed grass in the meadow,

And the laden bee's low hum,

Milkweeds all by the roadside,

To tell us summer is come.

Mary Austin

I love the contrast of the yellow throats with the purple petals! Another from the Chiwaukee Prairie in Wisconsin.

Birds at the beach

I wish there were something prettier to follow up that last post with, but...

I spent an hour or two at the beach after work yesterday and as much as I love it, I'm kinda scared to swim in the ocean and so mostly I just wade in a ways and try not to drown. The lifeguards here are so militant anyway, I guess because of the riptides, that they hardly let you go into the water deep enough to actually swim.

So I sat in the shallows with the gulls, letting the ocean fill my bikini bottom up with sand, just like a little kid. Fun! Gulls are pretty tolerant of people in the summertime, especially if they think you have food. They're interesting to watch; the way they eye you over as you approach, how they watch each other and give chase if another finds an interesting morsel in the surf. They especially like pizza flavored Combos and will swallow them whole. Something really cool I saw yesterday was a bunch of those little fish the terns catch started jumping up out of the water... I guess to escape some predator down below (maybe a bluefish?)... and the gulls all got up at once and were grabbing those tormented fish right out of the air! I've even watched the burly gulls try to sneak up on a lone sanderling... explains why sanderlings are so flighty, I guess.

Terns are my favorites; probably I could watch them all day. I guess their young have recently fledged and the parents are still feeding them while they learn to fish for themselves. It seemed they were fishing in pairs and the adult would return to the sand with a fish in its bill, young one following behind, and land to feed the baby... sweet! Anyone else ever see that? I would think terns are acrobatic enough to be able to do a fish exchange in mid-air and wonder why they bother to land at all.

The laughing gulls are starting to look all disheveled... the summer's drawing to a close, I guess.

Anything interesting happening with the birds in your neighborhood?

Gratuitous

Add this to the list of Things I Didn't Need to See

(but had to blog anyway)

(fair warning: it's about to get worse)

(grateful for having laid my towel sidewards of him)

;-)

Can we girls offer some advice like, "No. Don't ever. Please."

A doorway into thanks

For terns and their fast wings
and the silvery fish that vanish beneath them.

For the little that I have
and less now, even, that you left me with.

For the oddly striped and sunblocked
and our ritual weekend-wash in the sea.

For my books
and your eye that didn't discern their value.

For this memoried vessel
and its wealth of beauty in bloom.

It draws my eye from what's been broken and dusted over;
a greasy black powder to name my fear.

For the comfort of neighbors
and the part of me, despite this, that wants to feel ok here.

For the perfect pink end to this day
and its voices that animate the darkest corners of my heart.

For your lack of any real malice
and the small brown bunny left in peace to be a witness.

For all the familiar things that mock me, unseen
and the Kingbird's solemn regard.

For having no one, really, to run to
and surviving, anyway, this first of disasters.

*This post was created on a Mac!... the only happy result of my laptop and most all of my camera gear being stolen early this week. I'm working my way through being angry... and trying to find that thankful place in my heart again.

Please pardon the interruption

This space'll be quiet for a while longer until I sort out some computer issues.

Until then, be well!

Another skeeter hawk

This one probably teneral, or newly-emerged.

*Teneral* is Laura's big word for the day.

;-)

Free from the forest

I stumbled across an assemblage of mushroom geeks today (prior to our local audubon chapter's summer meeting) and showed them this pic of a day-glo orange cauliflower shaped mushroom I'd found in the woods in Michigan...

They all looked very excited and started licking their lips...

It would not occur to me to eat anything this flourescent, honestly.

But Chicken of the Woods, as it's known, is quite tasty according to those in the know.

Can anyone here recommend it? Have a nice recipe to share, just for fun maybe?