25

I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I’m just soul on a sunbeam. ~Richard Bach

Yes, I’m still checking off items from last year’s list…

: )

Kite flying has always looked like such fun to me and a little boy at the beach on Labor Day weekend with a stunt kite inspired me to get my own. A stunt kite has two lines for control and is not anything one can put up into the sky and tie off to a beach chair to be forgotten while you sunbathe.

You have to manage this thing and boy, is it fun! A gentle (or not so much) tug on either the right-handed or left-handed line will set the kite diving in whichever direction… the wind plays its hand and the kite is making loop the loops in a dangerous spiral towards someone’s umbrella…

Crash!!

There was much giggling and some cheering, even… a brisk wind and the sun low on the beach at Cape May… the lighthouse behind us… the curiosity of an Amish family out for a seaside afternoon…

I hadn’t felt so lighthearted in a long while.

And next I want to learn how to do tricks!

: )

25 in last year’s 39 by 40.

Who’d have guessed it?

I’d intended to post a “bad bird photo of the week” tonight, but this is not it.

Stop laughing. I can hear you, you know.

; )

I was at Cape May this past weekend and between the swarms of monarchs and tree swallows, which I mean to get to talking about eventually, there was an hour or so spent puzzling over the ducks at Lighthouse Pond in Cape May Point State Park.

I love ducks, but this time of year is awful for trying to identify any of them. There’s juveniles and females and males in eclipse plumage… basically meaning that no duck looks the way we expect them to… there’s hints to their identity, of course, but puzzling one’s way through bill and eye color is time-consuming and generally against the way I like to enjoy birds.

This bird was a puzzle we eventually gave up on… we’d called it a teal for a while… eventually settling on a Cinnamon Teal, even though we *knew* that wasn’t right…

Today there was this from The View at the Cape identifying this duck as a Northern Pintail. We’d never guessed that, I don’t think… some weird Wigeon, maybe, but a Pintail?

Of course it’s obvious to me now that I know what it is…

: )

Autumn on the doorstep

Some Borland tonight…

“Another week and Summer will be officially at an end, since we demarcate our seasons by the solstices and the equinoxes. We who live in a land of seasonal change will have Autumn on our doorstep. Even now the sun rises east and sets west, so far as the eye can see; and one hears regret that another Summer is gone.

In a sense, this is so; and yet no season, nor even any year, either stands alone or vanishes completely. Summer is rooted in Spring, and Autumn is essentially Summer’s maturity. The apple now reddened on the tree was a fragile blossom, a delight to the eye and a host to the bee, only a few months ago. The honey in the comb was pollen when June was at its height, and rains of April and hot July nights now come to ripeness in the cornfields. Even before the leaves come swirling down, buds are on the bough for another Summer’s shade.

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night; and thus he would never know the rhythms that are at the heart of life. There is a time of sprouting, a time of growth, and a time of harvest, and all are a part of the greater whole. There comes the time now to savor the harvest, to pause and know another year not yet brought to full finality.

The rhythm of life and thought and change will be close around us now, and the restless energy of Summer will be distilled into the stout brandy of another season. Change is ours to know and accept and build upon, even as the skies of Autumn clear and the leaves begin to fall. Fallen leaves open wider horizons to the seeing eye.”

Raiding my brother’s garden

I made a late morning visit to my brother’s house; I wasn’t really expecting to find him at home, but

the welcoming crew assembled to greet me as I stepped from the car…

and the garden sentry was especially suspicious of my motives,

but look at the bounty he’s charged with safeguarding!

I nearly tripped over this young member of the pest control crew…
(what funny curly feathers, btw!)

but this was my prize!
So Kev, those couple perfectly ripe tomatoes you thought the squirrels had stolen…
that was me!
; )

Just me rambling about birds, books, bunnies, or whatever!