Category Archives: Birds

Birds, Seasons, Snapshots

The birds of summer

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Sweet Summer…
don’t end!
You bring me beach plums
purple under a September sun,

but you take the osprey
and the huge folded serenity of the egret.
The beach is more deserted every day
and the skies bluer, the shapes of clouds more bewitching

but it’s too quiet!
A beach without laughing gulls is a sin against nature.
Well not really, but go with me on this people!!
; )
Summer is for sandcastles and buried treasure and sunburned shoulders;
laughing gulls animate the quiet between the tides.
Goldenrod and monarch butterflies populate the dunes
and the moon is heavy and yellow when it rises out of the surf,

but terns and swallows and kingbirds are departing
massing further south, out of earshot.
I’ll miss them this winter.
The peeps, in all their feathered mystery, have been leaving since mid-July.
They come, in May, with colored finery and leave, too soon, in a confusing camouflaged rush.

They all look the same… I can’t tell them apart
and don’t care to, really.
Maybe if I had more time to learn them.
One more day is all I need, for sure.
Summer… don’t end!
Birds, Half-finished ramblings, Remembering, Snapshots, Wanderings

Careful scrutiny

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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.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

Tern, tern, tern

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The birds shrug off
the slant air,
they plunge into the sea
and vanish
under the glassy edges
of the water,

and then come back,
as white as snow,
shaking themselves,
shaking the little silver fish,
crying out
in their own language,
voices like rough bells–

it’s wonderful
and it happens whenever
the tide starts its gushing
journey back, every morning
or afternoon.

This is a poem
about death,
about the heart blanching
in its folds of shadows
because it knows
someday it will be
the fish and the wave
and no longer itself–
it will be those white wings,
flying in and out
of the darkness
but not knowing it–
this is a poem about loving
the world and everything in it:
the self, the perpetual muscle,
the passage in and out, the bristling
swing of the sea.

–The Terns by Mary Oliver from House of Light, 1990

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All Commons, I guess. The Leasts are just too quick to photograph in the air. They’re still feeding babies on my favorite sandbar at Horseshoe Cove on Sandy Hook, but today there were far fewer loafing around. Maybe it’s just that the tide was higher this time.

I’m collecting tern poems if anyone has any to share…

Birds, In the neighborhood, Seasons

Sea swallows

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Field guides will tell you that terns are closely related to gulls and suggest that, because of similar feeding habits and a shared gregariousness, one might find all members of the Laridae family of birds equally deserving of our admiration.

That might be true for you, but I mostly ignore gulls in favor of terns. Exceptions to that are the handsome summer presence of Laughing Gulls and the dainty Bonaparte’s in winter.

In terns I see long fast wings that dance over the sun-dappled sea as it heaves at my feet…

and

the hover-and-plunge feeding technique so suited to little waves and the little fish they pluck from the shadows…

and

the dark eyes and sharp downward-pointed bills, the rising cloud of white birds and the storm of their cries all around me…

A particular joy at this time of the season, late July, when young terns and young osprey at Sandy Hook are learning to fish and to make their way in the world is to place myself among them on the bay near to sunset: behind every shell or pebble or bit of sea-drift is the possibility of a young bird waiting for its next meal delivery; a feathered army of birds marching ahead of me until finally I settle myself amongst them, drenched and soggy in the tide, sand-covered and happy.

: )

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Photos:

#1: Common or Forster’s? I’m thinking Common, but would welcome hints!

#2: Young Least Tern, begging (and squealing, almost!)

Birds, Whatever

Blue hydrangea with blurry kingbird

5 Comments

As you can see, all this time away from the blog has not improved my bird photography skills one bit.

😉

I love having kingbirds around; they’re among my favorite summer birds. A pair has nested in the neighborhood the past two years and I waste a lot of time just imagining explanations for their funny personality quirks…

I knew their babies had fledged this past weekend based solely on the increased frenzy in their parent’s shrill, chattering cries.

I was hopeful that there’d be a snapshot like last year’s, but no.

One of the parents, scaring up bugs in the hydrangea off the porch, was my best chance at a snapshot and I missed it. Darn misbehaving camera.

😉

Birds

What next?

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Drew works for the ABA and is down on the gulf monitoring efforts to save birds affected by the oil spill. His blog is one I read for up-to-date information on the recovery efforts and today’s update makes me heartsick…

Help me understand how this, too, can be happening?

Birds, I like to make lists, Pastimes, Snapshots, Wildflowers

Today

9 Comments

Birds are still singing;

the trees are long past their first delicate greening.

Peepers at the roadside are suddenly quiet.

The northward surge of Spring is past us now.

Summer flowers are blooming;

Canada Mayflowers put on quite a show this year

and I found my first blooming Starflower

(but the photo was awful!)

Birds are looking for homes

in boxes and under bridges,

gathering twigs and feathers.

Or building nests

from vines and rootlets

and whatever magic things they can weave together.

They’re making babies.

😉

Lots and lots of babies!

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I’m planting flowers of my own

and reading books

(and remembering how much I love the poetry of the Spanish language.)

I’m checking-off lists

and working on this year’s.

It’s a big one!

I’m planning a very private party to celebrate

and wanting to wander some, to contemplate

and squander time, letting it pass ungathered and unregretted.

There’s no pictures yet to share.

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What’re you up to?

Birds, PSA

All at once

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“All at once
The world can overwhelm me
There’s almost nothing that you could tell me
That could ease my mind

Which way will you run
When it’s always all around you
And the feeling lost and found you again
A feeling that we have no control

Around the sun
Some say
There’s gonna be the new hell
Some say
It’s still too early to tell
Some say
It really ain’t no myth at all…

Nobody really knows
But underneath it all
There’s this heart all alone

What about when it’s gone
And it really won’t be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all

There’s a world we’ve never seen
There’s still hope between the dreams
The weight of it all
Could blow away with a breeze
If you’re waiting on the wind
Don’t forget to breathe

Cause as the darkness gets deeper
We’ll be sinking so we reach for love
At least something we could hold
But I’ll reach to you from where time just cant go

Cause what about when it’s gone
And it really wont be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all”

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The Jack Johnson song is here.

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Images lifted from here. It’s a painful watch, but the least we can do, I think.

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Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research is a somewhat local organization that’s directly involved in mitigating this mess we’ve made. It’s also where my small donation is going.

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I’m sharing some of the most arresting (and heartbreaking) images I’ve seen thus far… and wondering at all the fumbling and finger-pointing that’s going on while wildlife suffers. Why wasn’t there some sort of plan in place… I mean, couldn’t this type of disaster have been foreseen?