Category Archives: Snapshots

From the field, Snapshots

First steps

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We have a student interning with us for the summer… a sweet girl from my alma matter who I got to drag along on field visits with me today.

I have to give her credit… so far she seems unfazed by anything she’s seen. What she’s heard about during downtime late on Friday afternoons hasn’t scared her off, either.

I admit to being careful in the selection of clients we saw today; I don’t suppose I needed to do that. But some things and some clients just make me too uncomfortable to have to deal with, without a student watching every bumbling move I make.

🙂

So rather than treating her to the guy who routinely answers the door in his underwear (!) or the lady in the house without a single place to sit or any of the really shady parts of town, we met with mostly regular clients and one who likes to talk. Alot. About everything imaginable. Inappropriate things, even.

It was fun. She barely raised an eyebrow.

In the new neighborhood, Seasons, Snapshots

Late spring weather report

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Is this the coldest, dreariest June ever? Or does it just feel that way here at the Jersey Shore? I feel like I live in London, or somewhere out on the coast of Oregon with all this fog and dampness and rain.

It’s kind of depressing.

There have been moments of light and magic… the rain clicking and tapping its song on the roof… the porch and its electric, marshy yellow-gray smell of storms before they get here… the big flag up the street snapping in the wind and the curtains blowing like ghosts in the night…

There was an hour or so on the beach at Spring Lake yesterday at sunset, after crab cakes for dinner at the inlet with the fishing boats going by with their escort of laughing gulls…

A bit of magic despite the gray, but I’m tired of wearing sweaters and long pants.

Is it summer yet in your part of the world?

Snapshots, Wanderings

Another look

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A toad’s facial expression doesn’t seem to change much from moment to moment.

😉

Easy for me to say, right? I’m not about to become its next meal.

This pic shows a bit more detail… the three or more warts on the largest dark spots that help to differentiate between the Fowler’s and a plain old American Toad.

There’s also some rubbish in books about the shape of cranial crests and their nearness to the parotoid glands that helps distinguish one toad from another. I know Fowler’s by their call, first. It’s a long, “Waaaaaaaaa” that sounds almost like a baby crying. Not as sweet a sound as the first Peepers of spring, but a welcome sound in the Barrens nonetheless.

Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

Nature stark naked

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Every new flower’s my favorite for a while… so bear with me here. Turkey Beard is a characteristic Pine Barrens plant and, according to all my books, quite common and easy to find.

Pfft.

The knowing where to look is key, apparently.

Mostly I just wander on my own when I go there; a precarious thing considering my poor sense of direction and how easily one might get lost among the intersecting sand roads. My always-turn-right strategy has served me well enough so far, but one of these days…

😉

It must be the strange, hard-won beauty of the place that captivates and distracts me so… the craggy pines and impenetrable scrub that holds the promise of something new at every visit. I don’t always find something new, of course, some days I just wander aimlessly and get eaten alive by skeeters and deer flies. Or practically freeze to death in the winter. Those things are pretty fun, too, when done in the spirit of exploration.

“There is something grand, charming and desirable in this vaguely despised country… the sand, the pines… it is Nature stark naked.” –Phillip Vickers Fithian, a Revolutionary War chaplain

Remembering, Snapshots, Wanderings

Captured: A moment

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“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” –Victor Borge

Photo by Nina.

It had been six months or so, that first night at Smokey’s, since Susan and I had had a chance to catch up, face to face. There was lots to talk about and some to laugh about, too.

Some, who like to tease, might compare her to another, more easily recognized birder-blogger, but I know better. She and I are like opposite sides of the same coin.

I’ve said that before, I know.

We’d toasted to our gathering, had dinner with old and new friends, and then, like the bad kids in the bunch we aspire to be, slipped outside during the evening’s program to laugh together and goof around without any audience. We did that a lot during our couple days together in W. Va.

Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

The tables turned

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Consider the cunning necessary for a plant – about the slowest-moving life form on earth – to lure, capture and consume a fast-moving insect.

😉

Sundews set their insect traps well below where their flowers bloom and lure prey by means of a sticky substance secreted by hairs on each of the leaves… it glistens in the sunlight and serves as a beacon to passing insects (and wandering photographers).

I was surprised to find spatulate-leaved sundews, as well as thread-leaved sundews, outside of a bog in the mostly dry sandy soil near the Speedwell entrance to the Franklin Parker Preserve.

“Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower ones, an anomoly in that the vegetable eats the animal.” –Neltje Blanchan

I like to make lists, Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

31

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Some favorites from a day spent in the Pine Barrens…

A Fowler’s Toad who was nice enough to let me get right up in his face.
Hold onto your seats! This is a really, really rare plant… Curly Grass Fern… it’s only about an inch tall.
I had company in my wanderings today, and this sweet lady had the patience to puzzle through her wildflower guide with me… we were trying to sort out the difference between Staggerbush and Fetterbush.
Beautiful! Rick Radis found Turkey Beard for us… I’d been looking for this for a couple years… now I know a spot to find it!
A dung ball… sans the accompanying beetles… I scared them off trying to get a better pic of them… very cool, anyway.

31 in my 38 by 39.