Up close with a Black and White

I spent a couple hours one morning last week at the Jekyll Island Banding Station; it’s Georgia’s oldest continually operated station. There’s always a nice variety of birds and the folks who run the station, for a couple weeks each fall, are happy for visitors.

This particular warbler, a Black and White, was quite feisty!

And handsome, of course…

Note the “target” penned on the bander’s finger… he says it gives the birds somewhere to aim their bites!

; )

Where the sea lends large

St. Simons Island is one of the coolest places to spend the low tide hours… the sea retreats almost a half mile and leaves in its place endless tidepools and sandbars for exploring…

There are joys in every moment. Some, like the Black Skimmers that fly past, hold a little tease and leave a wake of longing…

 

When I’m finished looking for seashells, there’s always birds to entertain me…

like these Boat-tailed Grackles playing King of the (sand)Castle

: )

(I forget how noisy they are when I’m away from the coast for too long!)

Royal Terns are grown, but still begging from their parents.

(endlessly entertaining!)

A walk among the birds at low tide teaches me to measure happiness by nothing I can hold… nothing I can catch.

; )

I sneak close on my belly, camera in hand, for a better look at the spot of mustard on a Sandwich Tern’s bill…

and squat low over the water with a Willet.

The beach is stretched out as far as it can go as I pause to consider a young Piping Plover feeding at the far end of a tidepool…

Can my imagination make this bird a familiar?

(Could be… though its banded companion was hatched in the Great Lakes area this past summer.)

I keep walking and exploring the quiet changes the outgoing tide has left; entire oceans are moved one inch at a time…

 

Olema

It is not drawn on any map; true places never are.  ~Herman Melville

We’re off to the coast for a couple days; mostly for the required beach fix…

 I wonder if this can work out to be a monthly thing, maybe? 

: )

I’m sharing a pic from where we stayed on the outskirts of Point Reyes National Seashore last month… a quirky sort of place with hummingbirds and chickens and even a view of horses out the bedroom window…

: )

I’ll be back with more from California.

6000 miles*

There were two days following behind a rental truck that had all my worldly belongings inside. Then a quick trip to the left coast (finally!) to dip my toes in that other (very cold!) ocean.

Baseball games, garden tours, marching band competitions…

(who’da guessed it?)

: )

I’m not settled quite yet; still there are boxes left to unpack.

We’re figuring this out… this necessary blending together of disparate lives.

I’m loving the light that pours in the windows here in the afternoons; it lulls me into a nap with a cat beside me.

(A cat?)

(Two, actually.)

Right. Exactly.

; )

I have everywhere still to go.

*give or take a few detours for coffee.

: )

Sorry to have been away for so long…