World Bird Wednesday LXXI

The Road to Nowhere

"The answer is blowing in the wind."

                                   Bob Dylan

    After the summer weather of the last couple of weeks the recent drop in temperature has put the kibosh on the migration. I traveled out to Tawas Point, a tiny peninsula on the North West end of Saginaw Bay, being dead sure I would see some spectacular sights there. The wind whipped around me as I trudged the shoreline and except for a colony of ring billed gulls the skies were quiet.
    Gasoline is expensive by American standards right at the moment, any field trip comes with a hefty price tag. My photographic strategy used to be taking advantage of my trips to Detroit to visit birding hot-spots between here and there combining work and pleasure in the process. I don't think I appreciated fully the variety of habitats that conveniently played out before me during this commute.
    One would naturally think more spare time would equal more chances, that retirement would be a boon to the cause, quite the opposite is the case. I am thinking of taking some mini trips with my little pop-up camper and staying overnight at some of my more distant haunts to maximize time in the field.
    It is still only March I tell myself, relax, but I am anxious to retool my life. As a leaf recently detached from its familiar place on the limb, I wait to see where I am blown.
    Like gasoline, patients is in short supply around here!

   
    Soon after High School I landed a job working on the assembly line at Chrysler's Lynch Road plant. It occurred to me then that I was driving a car to work to make cars so I could afford a car to go to work to make cars. At that early age I had already owned several. The change over from riding a bike to driving an automobile widened my world dramatically. Besides the Soul music of Motown, Detroit's other gift to the world was a free wheeling independence.
    I am thinking how now I would like to down shift back to my childhood and re-embrace the idea of a bicycle centered approach to transportation. Did you know the bicycle is the cleanest and most efficient form of transportation ever invented? Burning dinosaur bones to get from point A to point B now seems like a stupid indulgence. The dent driving a car makes in ones pocket book and the environment at large is obvious. To use one for short trips into town is ludicrous.
    Remember when you didn't consciously have to make time to exercise? I see these 90 day fitness regimes whipping folks into shape and think about the inevitable slow decline that begins again on day 91.
    Didn't we have something brilliant as kids, when we were self propelled; and being so motivated we were naturally fit? I am ready to test this theory of self-sustaining fitness and pledge to always ride my bike when it will do just as well or better than my car. There I have said it, the first baby step in actually doing it!

    Every good bird photographer knows the first secret to taking great pictures is to have your camera with you at all times. No camera = No picture.
    I bike about five miles into town and in the process roll through some wonderful wetlands. When I saw a used camera back pack at my local hole in the wall camera shop I snapped it up. Problem solved.
    Born to be wild!

"How differently things would be for you if you could fly!"
Spoke the swan passing by.

    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!

#1Simply 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/

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

#3Check 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 compatriots!

Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday LXX

A Swan Song

"Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

                                                                                                            Oscar Wilde

    Whose complaining about two weeks of 70 and 80 degree weather in the middle of a Michigan March when our average highs are traditionally only 42? Not I. The brave daffodils are in bloom three weeks early, we are in a hurry, nature and me.
    Burning up with spring fever, the tropical weather has lit the fuse on my inner handyman, already the fruit trees are pruned, I am knee deep into installing a new window in the barn and establishing a new vegetable garden just for kicks. It was time for a break.
    I started getting a little nervous about missing the migration given the remarkable weather and took a early season drive to Fish Point Preserve to see if anything was shaking. Tornado warnings were in effect in the counties North and South of the lower shore of Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay. Large flocks of Tundra swans, Canadian geese, and Trumpeter swans had collected in the stubble fields to avoid the violent skies. I had never seen a Tundra swan migration before! A species that mates for life, and perhaps beyond, the bond was mirrored in the synchronicity of their wing play during the slow descent to earth. Love is literately in the air, a stirring marriage of body and mind. So sublime is their singularity of passion, if one of the pair should come to a premature end the other will prefer to spend the rest of it's days flying solo and unattached; except to the memory of that one lost soul mate.
    The grounded throngs numbered in the thousands, at least that's my guess, about two or three percent of the entire Eastern North American population corralled for the evening by the wicked weather. Breeding pairs of Tundra swans are among the first to arrive in the Arctic, by then they are ready to be alone, defending a breeding territory of nearly a mile square. The non-breeding cygnets remain elsewhere, flock bound in daycare, while the adults are off doing...it!

"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart."

                                                              Buddha 

There were other targets to entice my attention like a pair of mad dashing Killdeer cutting up overhead.

My first GB heron and Great egret of the year were fishing in the paper dry reed beds of the marsh.

This nervous pair of love sick geese wanted nothing but to be left alone, obviously a first date!

Post script....
                     Yes! Mom received her Ipad and loves her little window on the world. She likes the comfy size. Her abandoned laptop has a stack of mail and clippings on it. It appears Microsoft has lost another customer and Apple can start tracking a new "over ninety" demographic!

You might want to try clicking on one of these pictures and enjoy the slide show!

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!



#1Simply 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/

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

#3Check 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 compatriots!

Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday LXIX

This fine looking young lady just happens to be my Mother whose 90th birthday we celebrated this week. A couple of summers ago while she was visiting, my neighbor Chris knocked on the side door and of all things he had a starling perched on his shoulder. The bird was completely sociable and took to my Moms shoulder comfortably for a meet and greet. Our little friend seemed healthy and flew off into the trees to wait for us if we went into the house and was eager to resume our inter-species dialog when we reemerged. He was our constant companion and shared in all manor of human activities from carpentry to gardening showing no fear of the noise or fuss. Why did this bird crave our attention?
   That starling beak is a wicked looking weapon viewed from close range and I had the uneasy feeling he might decide to poke my eyeball. I couldn't quite get my mind around being the object of this birds affection. Chris's young twin boys were afraid of the dive bombings we were being subjected to as well. This was a wild animal after all!
   I had heard old stories of Michigan's logging camps that told of how the shanty boys would hand train forest birds as personal pets. This young starling came pretrained as a sorcerers apprentice. What to do? On one hand I liked having this connection with a wild creature and the mystery it implied, on the other I felt he needed to resume a more natural routine. My adult instincts ruled the day. I took the starling deep into the Chippewa Nature Centers property about a half mile from the house and released him there. That was it. I felt lost for a few days after that, and a little guilty, like I had taken unfair advantage of a friends trust. The tree tops now cradled only distrustful strangers when I looked up. I still live in hope he will swoop down and take his place on my shoulder again. I think now, I could make a different choice, and let serendipity run it's course.
   Oh! What did Mom want for her 90th birthday you ask? An ipad! Intellect marvelously intact, she is ready to make her run at the century mark.




I must have caught this Common grackle in an unusual light because they're usually beyond black. There have been quite a few new comers working the leaf litter this week.

I was able to work in a little gull time this week keeping my eye sharp. Southerly winds are pushing the migrators toward the Great Lakes basin and I have plotted some early field trips starting today. It will be good to submerge myself into the wetlands again. Already the Red-winged blackbirds and American robins are back in town.





Something about this circlcular composition of gulls pleased me. Thanks to the Bagel Lady for her assistence!

Rafts of ducks are everywhere along the Great lakes flyway. Above, a common merganser takes to flight in the freshly thawed marsh. Below, Greater scaups wander in toward shore in range of my 400mm lens.

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!

#1Simply 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/

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

#3Check 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 compatriots!

Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday LXVIII

Such Is Life

     I could probably use a Wordless Wednesday or a free pass of some kind this week. My mind is sludged up and I am out of sync with the rest of life. The birds are not sitting quite long enough... or there's a branch in the way or...Wah,Wah,Wah!  It's that time of year in the Northern Hemisphere when all of us here participate in the mandatory self annihilation of a late winter nervous breakdown. What could be the remedy? I made a concerted effort to go after Blue jay pictures using every dirty trick I could conceive of. There's a gorgeous band in the area and I was doing okay at attracting them into the photographic set I had made out of a White pine branch bribing their compliance with peanuts and kerneled corn. Of course, I was not quick enough or intuitive enough to get that shot. It's impossible to force the issue when Vex, the God of frustration, finds divine comedy in your sincere bumblings. "Such is life," is what my friends and I used to say back in the day when our plans went awry. The expression helped our young heads sound worldly wise to life's vague mysteries. There is almost nothing this blithe saying doesn't sum up. It is the hammer and the nail. I spent two days trying to get a stinking Blue Jay picture and all I got is a long distance shot of two starlings eating rotten apples.    Such is life!      

An ill mannered dinner companion leaves before the check arrives.

This pleasant pheasant picture was taken last year around this time. Those were the days!

Help an old retired fireman out, pretend this is a Blue Jay.

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!

#1Simply 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/

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

#3Check 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 compatriots!

Come on it's your turn!