Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers
I love your school’s-out new-found freedom. Your sweet morning sunlight that tastes like past-ripe strawberries. Your just-right weather that’s not too hot, not too cold. Your seventh inning stretches and horses waiting at the gate. Your sun-colored pines and blue-eyed skies. Your traveling butterflies and too many birthday celebrations. Please stay for a while…
Birthday silliness at the Fernbank Science Center where we had hoped to watch Venus do its thing across the sun. There was a sell-out crowd, so we played in the kaleidoscope instead.
It’s been forever since I posted a stranger photo, hasn’t it?
; )
Back at the beginning of March I stumbled across a Civil War re-enactment that was happening in north Florida.
That’s an interesting sub-culture, let me tell ya.
I wandered around for a pleasant couple of hours watching these men and women while they waited for the rain to stop so they could have their battle. I still can’t get straight which color uniform belongs to which side. But I know who won the war!
Such a Yankee…
This man had one of those faces that the camera loves; I only wish he weren’t so shy and would’ve looked at me…
This photo is #9 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
Ever been too close to a Sandhill Crane? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but anything’s possible in Florida, I think. Much like a previous encounter with Sandhills, I was pretty dazzled!
We found these at the Viera Wetlands in Brevard County, Florida when we visited in mid-March. It’s such a cool place… be sure to get there someday! We drove the car loop and happened upon these two Sandhills moseying along the dike as if they owned the place.
What a gorgeous bird! And to think that they’re hunted across much of their range.
Ridiculous, really.
I’d been hoping to spot a group of cranes in their migration over Atlanta; tried, in fact, to listen for them anytime I was outdoors in early Spring, but I never got that lucky. Instead I was pursued by two across the dike at Viera… we kept pulling the car forward… me in the grass, backing away in retreat…
These birds are very, very tall.
And not afraid of cameras.
Later in the afternoon we found a pair at their nest… at this, they were alarmed by our presence and we left to watch some Blue-wing Teal that weren’t bothered by us nearby. Someone in a car after us lingered too long near their nest and we heard their unmistakable rattling calls of protest.
And still later in the afternoon, we spotted this… a Sandhill Crane colt! It was far off in the distance, feeding with its parents in the middle of a cow pasture that borders the wetlands. You might have to enlarge this pic to spot the baby… too far away this time!
Birders are a generous lot, as a rule. Mention on FB that you’ll be visiting a particular place and before you know it, birder friends will have dinner plans and an itinerary made for you, including convenient stops along the way from the airport where you can find whatever species of bird it is that you’re pining after.
I’d been pining away for Piping Plovers, it being March and all. March is the month when plovers return to NJ beaches from wherever it is that they’ve spent the winter months. March in the Northeast is the most miserable of months, I think, because Spring is so close on the horizon and you want it so badly, but the weather is dank and damp and mostly miserable, cold and gray.
On the tails of a short vacation in Florida, a couple days on Cape Cod in March seemed an impossibility… I’d given away most all of my cold-weather clothes before moving here and going from shorts and flip-flops to thermal underwear and gloves in the span of a week felt ridiculous! But… there might be Piping Plovers!
I spent an afternoon wandering around the city of Boston… remembering the cold and delighting in a Dunkin’ Donuts on almost every corner! Spring had the willows in Boston Commons that lovely green that willows know how to perfect.
Weeping willows are not very common here. Surprising that I should miss them…
The coast of Florida is, of course, beautiful and I’m glad for each and every chance to visit, but beaches there lack something that beaches in the Northeast have in abundance. It might be the wind that never rests. Or air that is thick with salt and the smell of low tide. Oh, how I miss that smell! Maybe it’s just atmosphere and the feeling of home. There are beautiful and scenic places where I live now, but no easy access to the ocean.
We met up with a local Cape Cod bird club and spent an appropriately cold and misty, rainy morning on the beach at Nauset Light (thanks for the suggestion Mojoman!) looking at winter birds. We wandered along dirt roads on the Cape looking at ducks and exploring the ponds that Mary Oliver described in her poetry.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast perched on Gull Hill in Provincetown… and scanned the harbor for breaching whales while we had afternoon wine and cheese and watched Northern Gannets dive into the ocean from the warmth of our rental car at Herring Cove Beach.
Race Point Beach had plover fencing installed, but no Piping Plovers, yet.
Compensation for the lack of plovers was found at the wharf in P-town, where we found Harlequins and Common Eiders within spitting distance! Eiders have always been one of those birds for me… I’d never had a really satisfying look at them before and anywhere that one can see Harlequins without a treacherous jetty-walk (like at Barnegat Light) is worth a visit.
Of course I didn’t have a proper camera with me, you know.
Silly.
I’d love to get back to Cape Cod in the summer someday… maybe even visit Nantucket. I’d imagine late September to be the perfect time of year… maybe I could catch the Piping Plovers before they depart…
An Atlanta Audubon Society bird walk at nearby Panola Mountain gave us an excuse to check in with the Elf Orpine at Arabia Mountain…
It was blooming, finally, that last weekend in March.
The wildflowers carpet the outcrop in pleasing patterns of pink and white…
Sandwort was in full bloom, too!
Enough soil accumulates for these neat little plants to grow…
Enough water had accumulated in this one depression for baby froglets to grow! I hope they mature before the pool dries up…
Arabia Mountain is such a neat place; I can’t wait to see what is has waiting at our next visit.
Photographing terns on a nude beach requires careful cropping.
; )
So my dilemma was this: resist the opportunity to photograph the royal terns, laughing gulls, willets and black-bellied plovers loafing together in the sunshine at Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore or bare (tee hee!) with the discomfort of using a camera amid a bunch of naked people.
I chose the assumption that those folks wouldn’t mind the long-as-my-arm telephoto lens so long as I didn’t ever point it directly at them. I never figured on them to walk purposefully, almost, and repeatedly through my frame. Or to approach me, full-frontal(!), to talk camera gear.
What was I thinking!!!
Never again, never again.
Lesson learned.
*parts of this photo have been excessively blurred in deference to the comfort of readers.
