Birds, PSA

All at once

6 Comments

“All at once
The world can overwhelm me
There’s almost nothing that you could tell me
That could ease my mind

Which way will you run
When it’s always all around you
And the feeling lost and found you again
A feeling that we have no control

Around the sun
Some say
There’s gonna be the new hell
Some say
It’s still too early to tell
Some say
It really ain’t no myth at all…

Nobody really knows
But underneath it all
There’s this heart all alone

What about when it’s gone
And it really won’t be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all

There’s a world we’ve never seen
There’s still hope between the dreams
The weight of it all
Could blow away with a breeze
If you’re waiting on the wind
Don’t forget to breathe

Cause as the darkness gets deeper
We’ll be sinking so we reach for love
At least something we could hold
But I’ll reach to you from where time just cant go

Cause what about when it’s gone
And it really wont be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all”

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The Jack Johnson song is here.

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Images lifted from here. It’s a painful watch, but the least we can do, I think.

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Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research is a somewhat local organization that’s directly involved in mitigating this mess we’ve made. It’s also where my small donation is going.

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I’m sharing some of the most arresting (and heartbreaking) images I’ve seen thus far… and wondering at all the fumbling and finger-pointing that’s going on while wildlife suffers. Why wasn’t there some sort of plan in place… I mean, couldn’t this type of disaster have been foreseen?

Whatever

Lakeside

9 Comments

I’m sort of going through the motions here…

Have you noticed?

Of course you have. I apologize.

Someday soon I’ll get back on track, find a place to write from again.

In the meantime, I’m marveling in Spring as much as my full-time job in a cubicle allows. There’s lunchtimes spent with strip-mall birds and evenings beside this little lake with swallows and night herons and kingbirds for entertainment. There’s been whole weekends devoted to wildflowers and birds and traveling to be with friends.

I wander with my camera, annoyed with this crappy lens, annoyed with how little of the magic I see and the wonder I feel that it seems able to capture, annoyed with my inability to describe any of it in words.

I’m in some sort of a funk, probably.

I’m reading again instead, finally. Voraciously, somehow, after months on end of not being able to concentrate on anything as solid as a book. Probably that’s the fuel I need to have anything of import to say here.

Maybe.

😉

I’m reading about horses again and I’m afraid I might finally have decided what I really want for my 40th.

(laugh)

Bear with me.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

A bird in the hand

2 Comments

brings a quick smile to the face!

I wandered away for a bit on World Series Day to spend a couple minutes with Tom while he banded birds. This is his second spring at Sandy Hook and Saturday found his nets overflowing with migrants! Canadas, like this one, were everywhere… as were Magnolias and Wilson’s.

I hung around taking photos and waiting for the rest of the crowd to amble away… finally Tom asked me if I’d like to hold a Magnolia that he’d just finished processing.

Gasp!

I felt strangely hesitant and scared… I’d held birds before, hawks, even tiny hummingbirds, but only injured or window-strike dazed birds. These wide-awake and eager-to-go warblers frightened me with their flutterings and protests.

Silly me… it’s just a little bird!

I’m sure my face was as giddy as this lady’s was… to feel those feathers in my hand, that tiny beating heart beneath my fingers and its trembling…

A sweet unexpected gift.

: )

Birds, In the neighborhood, Pastimes, Snapshots

World Series 2010

4 Comments

They were almost delirious enough around 7 pm to smile at my camera without much prodding beyond, “Time for the obligatory group photo everyone!”

😉

We’d been out for better than 12 hours at that point and had just about tallied our total for the day, save for the odd swallow and a bittern that never materialized. It was a fabulous day for birds… the kind of day where you just want to plant yourself in one spot and watch wave after wave of migrants come to you; it was that good! Sandy Hook can be spectacular under the right conditions and this year’s World Series of Birding was just such a day. We ended with a record-setting (for us) 143 species!

And to think some birders go midnight to midnight and traipse across the whole state for less.

😉

Bad bird pics to follow, shortly. Previous posts about WSB are gathered here.

Crazy things i do to amuse myself, Small truths, Travels with the flock, Wanderings, Wildflowers

Side of the road

17 Comments

You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile
I wanna know you’re there, but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you

I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind
If I stray away too far from you, don’t go and try to find me
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it doesn’t mean I won’t come back and stay beside you

It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.

A thousand miles there and back to spend a day with friends, old and new, gathered for the New River Birding and Nature Festival might seem crazy to some…

In fact, probably it was crazy to do, but the singing birds, the people, the chance to wander alone looking for wildflowers in those riotously rich West Virginia mountains … it’s all kinda irresistible to me.

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Lyrics from “Side of the Road” by Lucinda Williams.

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Photos:

(1) Windflower (Anemone sp.) Among my favorite wildflowers, Anemones are heartbreakingly beautiful and delicate

(2) Showy Orchis (Orchis spectabilis) I dragged Jim McCormac out in the near dark yesterday to show me where to find this beauty

(3) A giddy me photographing blooming May-Apples

(4) May Apple flower (Podophyllum peltatum) The parasol-like foliage of May-Apples is cool enough, but the flowers are especially lovely; more so cause you have to lie with your face in the dirt to photograph them where they hide beneath the leaves

😉

(5) Fire Pink (Silene virginica) So named not because of their color, obviously, but because of the scissor-like notches on the petals… thanks Susan!

Fire Pink and silly me photos by MevetS.

Birds, Snapshots, Whatever

Ave querida, amada peregrina

2 Comments

¿A dónde irá veloz y fatigada
la golondrina que de aquí se va?

Por si en el viento se hallará extraviada
buscando abrigo y no lo encontraré…

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Where are you going, swift and weary
swallow, why are you leaving here?

And what if you lose your way in
the wind, looking for a home you’ll never find…

A snippet of a traditional Mexican song, “La golondrina” is often sung as a farewell at funerals for those who’ve died far from home. I was reminded of it this afternoon watching the swallows feed low over the lake in the rain.

*Lyrics from “La golondrina” by Narciso Serradel Sevilla. The translation to English is mine and is far from precise.
😉
Wanderings, Wildflowers

One swallow

4 Comments

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring. – Aldo Leopold

Early spring is a season of small flowers, of course, and one Spring Beauty or one Violet is of no consequence…

but a carpet of them, sneaking up through the blanket of last year’s leaves or the first green grass where the sun beckons…

that’s the Spring!

*the Violet is Viola brittoniana,a South Jersey specialty.

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