World Bird Wednesday LIII

A World of Sticks

   I think I still have a bit of a hangover from WBW's 1st anniversary blast last week. My mind is blank, over played in the face of the remarkable nature of your kind comments and well wishes. My pictures seem random and disconnected as I look for candidates to splash a blog post with. It's hard to see a thread of logic or a story to connect them with. I wish I had a good turkey picture to make ironic Thanksgiving comments about, maybe relate it to the naive Native Americans who paid a hefty price for the sin of poor character assessment when the billowing sails of ocean going vessels first tipped over the Eastern Horizon. That point has been made, sharpened many times over.
  Yes, if it is your fate to be American, it is a good bet a fifteen to twenty pound turkey torso is laying in wait inside your refrigerator. There is one in mine, complete with a pop up thermal plug to let me know when the bird is thoroughly roasted. If your not American or decline to celebrate overindulgence this Thanksgiving holiday, rejoice and be thankful anyway, as a WBW person you will be fondly and well remembered as I lift a toast while counting my greatest blessings this Thursday. If by chance, luck has you in Michigan this week, there is a chair for you at my table and a soft pillow to cradle your head after chow.

Luckily this is a bird blog, and it's never a mistake to simply tell how you got the pictures.

  

   My son Josh and I took a cruise around Belle Isle one morning after work. His Firehouse and mine had gone to a little church fire the evening before but other than that the night had passed peacefully. Belle Isle is our decompression zone. We meet there to share and shed the comings and goings of the previous work day. The patch lays across the MacArthur bridge; a calm, green oasis, a stones throw from the poor neighborhoods of lower East-side Detroit that we fight fires in. Half way between Lakes Huron and Erie, along the Great Lake's flyway, it's a prime stopover point for migrating birds. A family of Night Herons summers here and they're a lot easier to find now that the leaves have fallen. Their hiding places made bare, we can see right into the world of sticks.
   The big news this week has been the Tundra swans out on the choppy waters of the Detroit river. The adult swans are leading the Atlantic flock from their summer home along the Arctic rim, funneling down the center of the continent to the wintering grounds up and down the North American Eastern seaboard. It is a nice diversion to think that these great birds were in such an exotic location just a short time ago; World travelers come to town with the salt of strange seas still on their feathers.  

  

   The comings and goings of bird life is stock and trade for us, the watchers of nature. We mark time by the migrations as surely as the Astronomers can, guided by the path of stars through the heavens. To what end does this watching take us? 

   It is folly maybe, to think you can look into the mind of another species. To know their motivations, the primal urge to raise wings and commence a great journey. To see in your minds eye the stars in the same way they do. To feel the magnetic pull of the Earths poles and travel the third dimension of air, wind, and thermals as surely and deftly as we Earth bound souls scratch the dirt with our hands and feet. Are we designed for lesser things than they that flock above?

   Do they pity us, the birds? 

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most beautiful treasurers, the birds.

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature!

  

World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry, it contains a link for your readers to share in the fun. Or, you can copy this link on to your blog page to share WBW. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

Come on it's your turn!