The beach at Asbury Park 2/4/09 No swimming
The beach at Asbury Park 2/4/09 Category Archives: In the neighborhood
The beach at Asbury Park 2/4/09 
A picture of unhappiness…
…the pond at his feet was frozen solid at mid-week. It was fifty degrees today, so I imagine the GB Heron is looking a little less cranky today.
😉
(Probably not.)
Wordless Wednesday
Snowy boardwalk reflection at Asbury Park 
Crayfish for lunch: A hoodie story
I did the loop around Lake Takanassee as something of an afterthought on my way home from the bird observatory this afternoon. I wasn’t expecting anything new; hoping for a couple Canvasbacks maybe, or just a closer look at the couple Ring-Neck Ducks that are in the big lake since their more secluded spot is frozen over.
I’d finished sorting through the Coot, and the Canada Geese, the couple Brant and the sweet Wigeon, ready to drive away when a lone Hooded Merganser on the far side of the lake caught my eye. Mainly it was the Great Black-Backed Gulls harassing the Hoodie that got my attention. I’d read about this behavior in those big burly gulls, but had never witnessed it myself.
I didn’t know what I was seeing and misinterpreted it, of course. The gulls repeatedly lifted the Hoodie out of the water, as if to fly away with it for lunch, but then dropped it back in a splash. Horrible mean gulls! The Hoodie kept diving under the water to escape, only to be taken aloft again. Poor thing! At this point I was out of the car, finally remembering my camera and with murder in my heart.
😉
It wasn’t until I got home and enlarged my pics, that I figured out what I’d really seen. The gulls were scared off by something… me maybe… and the Hoodie swam close to shore to rearrange its hard won prize. What I’d imagined to be a mouthful of fishing wire and hooks or some such other horrible death for this duck, was instead a crayfish, I think.
Lunch.
That he had no intention of sharing with any gull.
😉
Click on this pic to enlarge… it’s hilarious!
Looking at these pics, I’m reminded of those I’ve seen of GB Herons and their ministrations when *handling* prey items that are a bit too big for them. But Hooded Mergansers? Who knew? See how he’s stretching out his neck to let it slide down?
Gulp!
This whole time, of course, I was convinced that my favorite duck in the world was choking and dying mere yards away.
😉
Hoodies can smile with their crests, I think. Can you see the relief on his face?
Once home I read that crayfish are a favored food for these ducks and that they have a special gizzard-type thing, like chickens I guess, to process the hard shells of crustaceans.
Something else I read said that they only eat the claws of crayfish, like us with their bigger cousins, but I have no idea how he actually managed to get that thing down his throat, if he had to shake away the body first, before swallowing the sweet bits.
Birds. Always something new to learn.
😉
Where will you sleep tonight?
“Living is easy with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all that you see…”
–Strawberry Fields
Statistics from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition indicate that the average “housing” wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment in NJ is approximately $23.00 per hour. A “living” wage, which would also include the costs of food, utilities, daycare, transportation, insurance and the other expenses of family life would have to be… how much more? Half again, at least? Considering that the “minimum” wage in NJ is just $7.15 per hour, most of our preschool teachers, home health aides, security guards, accounting clerks, cashiers and receptionists would have to work three full-time jobs just to pay the rent.
Read that again, maybe. There’s not enough hours in a week, I don’t think.
Is it the same where you live? Do you even care?
I got to do something really fun for work today. Each year, counties in NJ and across the country, conduct a survey of the homeless population. The data gathered includes questions on how long a person or family has been homeless, how many times they have experienced homelessness in the previous three years, what incidents may have led to their homelessness and where they stay during their time homeless (hotel, shelter, on the streets, etc.) The survey asks about the services they may need, what they have been turned down for, and what they currently receive in an attempt to measure gaps in local services. The information gathered is used to justify federal grants for homeless services.
It’s a fine opportunity for local politicians to get their photo in the paper serving lunch at the soup kitchen down the street and for social workers like me to do something a little different. I’m asked to help out because I’m bilingual and because we have a good number of undocumented workers in our area that are needy and under-served by community resources.
I spent the day completing silly surveys, handing out donated winter coats, blankets, toothbrushes and interpreting for the visiting nurses who were doing free health screenings. And listening to stories. Wonderful stories from hard-working people who have a lot to offer. Some of my coworkers were out before dawn at the places where illegals gather to find work, in order to connect them with basic services like free clinics and food pantries and legal aid. Others were in mobile units visiting the homeless in abandoned buildings, or along the boardwalk, or in tent communities in the woods.
Yes, people live in the woods. Working people.
Does that surprise you? Anger you maybe, I hope?
A great many of us live with blinders on, I suppose, or imagine the poor to be deserving of the card that life has dealt them. They’re mostly lazy and like living off government handouts, right?
Do you know that cash assistance grants to families on welfare haven’t increased in more than 21 years? That a mother and child on welfare receive just $322 a month, plus a similiar amount in foodstamps, to live on? How long would $322 plus some milk and bread last you?
Pfft.
I’m faced with these numbers everyday when I do my federally-mandated job of promoting self-sufficiency for my clients. We work on budgets and planning for the future and how to make things better. The best many can hope for is a minimum wage job, which in turn, will trigger a loss of free daycare, free health insurance, free transportation and free or reduced housing. How can I sincerely push them into a full-time job that’ll keep them well below federal poverty standards and with no safety net?
None of these people are truly homeless, of course. We’ll put them up, if need be and for the sake of the children, in some seedy motel, or a horrible smelly shelter. We call that enough and blame them for it all the while.
Illegal aliens, the general public will be happy to know, receive nothing from the government. Nothing. They are not among the homeless, generally, and are very good about making do. They rely on non-profits and churches, but mostly on each other. Plus, they’re gracious and say thank you for this out-of-style-coat-that-doesn’t-fit exactly-right and then compliment you on your poor Spanish. All of which feels pretty nice.
😉
The ones we really need be concerned for are the elderly, and veterans, and the mentally ill. There’s no real way to reach them, no program in place for the ones that have truly been wronged by fate.
—End of Rant—
PD: Be an advocate for affordable housing in your area… learn the statistics… speak out!
Winter playground
A couple iceboats on the river late this afternoon evicted the gulls from their usual loafing spots on the ice. Click on the pic to see how handsome he is – even for a sleepy gull.
😉
I’m waiting for more sun and the big boats this weekend…
Some nice pics from yesterday can be found at Red Bank Green. I stole a couple to include here…
I especially liked this silly dog chasing a skater…
and this wide view of the scene taken from mid-river.
Hope, in feathers
There’s a kind of rightness and predictability in bird behavior that is almost comforting to me.
Knowing to expect that every last hooded merganser will take flight to the farthest edges of the pond when I raise my lens confirms to me that I know one aspect of this species pretty well.
Waiting for the local pair of osprey to begin setting up housekeeping in mid-March or the woodcock to twitter and spiral through an early spring dusk or merlins to streak low through the dunes in late afternoon looking for a meal to keep them through a night’s chill… all enhance my awareness of life’s insistent rhythms and set a pace for my own schedule in harmony with a larger, more universal system.
There’s also the realization that birds have important lessons to teach us; about being careful and its necessity for survival (hoodies are overly careful, I think) and about beauty and stirring the imagination (think of a flock of terns dropping from the sky into the summer blue bay or a scarlet tanager suspended in an oak) and also, they teach us about hope.
I found that hope looking me squarely in the eye a few weeks ago. Along an often-walked path through the local woods, I looked up a tree trunk one afternoon to find it looking back at me, in that magical way that owls have of appearing out of nothing. I’d stopped looking for screech owls along that path a couple years ago when their nesting box was vandalized, but this one had found a little hole in a nearby maple with which to frame his unblinking face. I think we both were somewhat shocked to be seeing one another, his face full of concentration at not being seen and mine one of pleasant surprise at learning that sometimes good birds are closer than we think.
What good birds have you found lately and what did they offer you?
😉
Collared
I’d rather it be a band on a nicer bird that I’m reporting, never having done this before, but I suppose I should think instead of the scientific or research value. How an understanding of this one mute swan’s behavior might help to protect less beautiful, but more endangered waterfowl species.
Click for a prior rant on mute swans.
😉
I’ve been bothered to notice mute swans on my local rivers lately. Every spot with open water that I visited today had a bunch of them. There were quite a few sleeping on the ice mixed in among the gulls, too. At least they’re mostly civil to the other waterfowl at this time of year and tame enough (big, too!) to pose for my camera.
My favorite complaint while chasing ducks is that the prettiest ones are the first to fly away. Not so with a mute swan.
Anyone else ever reported a banded bird? Do they really send a certificate, like they promise? Anyone else find this form long and overly intimidating?
Come, winter wind
Pray for ice and a good, long cold spell to make it thick enough that this monster might make an appearance on the Navesink for the first time since 1920. The Rocket, with its 38 foot tall mast and 900 sq. ft. of sail, has been painstakingly restored and is ready to barrel across the ice, if only the weather will cooperate.
I’m hoping maybe the weekend after next, if this cold sticks.
Image from The North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club
The other side of sunset
I’d been looking straight ahead, watching the sun sink behind the hills of Atlantic Highlands, coloring the sky above Sandy Hook Bay in pink and turquoise when a flash from the north caught my eye and I turned to see the NYC skyline ablaze with the setting sun.