A nice meal at their favorite restaurant…
Then a monster movie (Cats in the Window!)…
And a tasty dessert…
I hope spring brings baby squirrels to the yard!
A Foggy Day at Back Bay
Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge is one of my favorite places. It’s basically a sandy ridge of land between two major bodies of water. Some of its hiking trails wind over high dunes and trickle down to the Atlantic Ocean. Other trails slither through the salt marshes that border Back Bay.
Each winter, thousands of migrating birds pass through the refuge. So today, despite gray, misty skies, we decided to spend a few hours looking for geese.
At first, all we found was fog.
The further we walked, the thicker the fog.
On the beach, there were no horizons. The view simply faded into nothingness.
Every so often, the fog thinned a bit. Then the world regained its edges, though none of the edges seemed fixed. Everything was blurred and soft.
We walked nearly an hour before seeing or hearing any geese. Then… Snow Geese!
Snow geese everywhere! Geese as far as the eye could see (which, admittedly, wasn’t very far)…
(Please pardon the inconsistent focus and poor light. It really was quite foggy.)
Photos can’t sufficiently convey the scene. Sound was a major part of the magic.
After a while, we began to notice other birds hidden among the geese. In particular, swans. (I think these might be Tundra Swans?)
And American Coots.
It was hard to walk away from such a glorious scene, but nightfall’s approach turned the fog almost impenetrable.
As we were leaving, the geese were still arriving. One group landed right beside us, inside the shrinking sphere of the fog’s miasma.
Along the return trail, we found ducks. (I can’t begin to guess what kind of ducks…)
And finally, right beside the parking lot, we surprised a solitary Great Blue Heron.
It was a beautiful way to end a beautiful, foggy day…
Cormorants and a Grebe
Over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing cormorants on nearby ponds. Usually small groups, four or five at a time, and never when my camera is ready. As today’s warm, bright sunshine seemed wasted on a half-tame squirrel in an overfull bird feeder, I grabbed my keys and a jacket and started walking.
My first stop brought instant success.
And this was no small group of cormorants.
It was a cormorant flock, dotted here and there with seagulls.
It was too easy, and after a few frames I turned my attention to an adjacent canal. I saw a flicker of movement, a small brown and white flash that left a few ripples to prove I had not been hallucinating. Moments later, this little grebe surfaced long enough to allow a single photo.
I wasn’t certain, at first, that it really was a grebe. When it reappeared, too far down the canal for my lens, I followed. For the next half-hour, I chased my shy target up and down a hundred yard stretch of water. It would bob to the surface, linger long enough to catch my eye, then dive again. When it tired of diving, it retreated to areas blocked by branches, forcing me to thread the camera’s focus through gaps so small that the slightest movement ruined my shots.
When I finally found a good vantage point and had the opportunity to line up a clear photo, I got so excited that I moved too fast, stepped on a branch, and frightened the grebe into another fifteen minutes of prolonged diving. Almost ready to give up, I turned my attention to a pair of ducks.
Then the grebe popped back into sight, drifted into a clear spot, and seemed to pose. Almost as if it had tired of our chase. (I believe this is a pied-billed grebe. Please comment, if you can correct or confirm my identification.)
After taking these photos, I became aware of a disturbance on the pond behind me. Small, repeated splashes…
At first, I couldn’t tell what was happening. Then I realized that the cormorants had begun fishing.
They dove over and over again. Sometimes the entire flock disappeared underwater.
I soon realized why the gulls were there. Each time a cormorant surfaced with a particularly tempting catch, the gulls attacked, shrieking with greed.
The attacks only stopped when a family arrived with a bag of bread, luring the gulls away with the promise of easier food.
I took a few more pictures before leaving the pond, catching a group of sleepy ducks and a northern shoveler.
Then I headed home, eager to download my photos and put together a new blog post. (Partly because I’m still in the learning phase, when it comes to bird identification, and I would love a little help naming these cormorants and gulls!)
The Horses
Horses were the only pets forbidden on our acres. My oldest sister tested Daddy’s rule from every conceivable angle, but was no match for his resolve. Leaving the battle in her capable hands, I consoled my own longing with Breyer collectibles. My herd grew with each Christmas and birthday, multiplied between as my allowance allowed.
I didn’t play with my horses as I played with other toys. Instead I lavished them with furniture polish and imagination, displaying them on shelves high beyond the reach of rowdy kittens and teething puppies.
I left them behind when I moved into college, but Mother knew better. She waited until I graduated and married, until my husband and I bought a house of our own. Then she forwarded the herd to Virginia, where I welcomed them with tears and furniture polish, with new shelves beyond the reach of rowdy kittens and teething puppies.
And last fall my oldest sister sent her horses to join the herd.
She never knew, until a chance conversation brought it up, that I had coveted her horses in our youth. As she has real horses now, and as she understands how much I treasure my plastic herd, she packed up Misty and a Clydesdale and gave them to me. So we have added two to the throng, though an unpracticed eye might never notice the newcomers.
A Sunny Mid-Winter Day
Today’s bright sunshine lured me into the yard, where I spent the afternoon starting (but not finishing) a number of chores. My first job involved two small bird houses, which have become a winter refuge for spiders. Determined to avoid more encounters with black widow spiders, I wanted to clean out the webs and evict any venomous guests.
I’ve been dreading this task, and I was relieved when a clump of weeds with tiny white flowers gave me an excuse to put off confronting the spiders.
After photographing the unfamiliar weed (I believe it might be hairy bittercress), I crawled through patches of henbit and speedwell, trying to capture their enchanting beauty.
I crossed half of the yard on my hands and knees before I remembered the bird feeders. Dusty and empty, all of the feeders needed attention. Under the second feeder, I found a cicada molt.
A short time later, I moved into the front yard. Before reaching the final bird feeder, I stopped to take a photo of paperwhites.
Beside the paperwhites, a single hyacinth was trying to bloom. Trying unsuccessfully, for the moment, because something has been grazing on it.
A quick search for suspects found a rabbit hiding in the irises and a squirrel trying to hide in a nearby tree. They both looked guilty to me.
Distracted by rabbits and squirrels, I never finished the last feeder. I also didn’t get to the windows, which are disgracefully dirty.
But I don’t regret my disorganized day, which ended on a sunny, sleepy note.
I can clean bird houses, feeders, and windows some other day, some cloudy day when the yard doesn’t sparkle with wonders.
Rae Spencer 