Category Archives: Wanderings

Almost There

“Nature repeats itself in many forms. When I look at Queen Anne’s Lace, I see outer space. When I look to the sky, I see flowers.”

Some of you may have known Bobbie at Almost There and remember that she passed away back in late June of this year. I never met Bobbie, but we often kidded about meeting someday down at Cape May where she lived. In fact, I tried talking her into coming along on a Flock gathering many times; Bobbie was my Dad’s age and I guess the thought of running around with a couple crazy-birder-types seemed like too much to her. I’d have been content to sit beside her on a bench beneath the lighthouse and listen to her stories instead.

So I went this morning to her memorial service at Leaming’s Run Gardens and listened to her children tell her story, mostly by sharing excerpts from the writing she’d done through the years. Much of her family history and personal insights were included in a small memorial book… the opening quote about Queen Anne’s Lace came from there… and this offered me a better appreciation of a woman I’d admired from afar for the last couple years.

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…

: )

Nap time

A special treat of late summer in Cape May is the flock of Black Skimmers and Royal Terns that rest and spend the daylight hours half asleep, crowded beside each other on the beach near the 2nd Ave. jetty.

They present a curious site to beach-goers, I imagine, and always make me chuckle at just how relaxed a posture many take. How often do we get to see birds sleeping, after all?

: )

A Jersey stare down

: )

The 7th Annual New Jersey Meadowlands Festival of Birding is scheduled for next weekend, September 11 and 12th. An urban oasis, the NJ Meadowlands is made up of more than 8,000 acres of wetland habitat and is home to better than 280 species of birds. A designated Important Bird & Birding Area, much of the prime birding habitat is situated on reclaimed landfill sites.

Richard Crossley, the author of The Shorebird Guide, is giving the keynote.

Maybe I’ll get him to sign my book, finally.

; )

Hope to see you there!

Careful scrutiny

I’d wanted to write
about night herons
and their delight in the lowest tides
their thankless patience
their red eyes and startling cries in the gloom of night

or the careful scrutiny of a gull’s eye
under the august sun
as the tide goes out
and sanderling plunder the wrack-line at my feet

instead there’s the moon rising, lopsided and yellow
the promise of a little prince, enjoyed together
this deliberate probing of a heart’s memory
and the shared revelation
of a whimbrel’s decurved bill.