Category: Pictures

Sandhill Cranes #birding

The Sandhill Cranes overwinter in northern Alabama near Weiss Lake. The flocks have been getting bigger as the word seems to be spreading among them. They concentrate on damp/flooded cotton and soybean fields where they can find various small creatures to eat.

DSC_0307

DSC_0304

While we were parked and taking photographs several flocks flew in to join the main one. They spread out in the morning and then gather together. The next few shots show the process.

DSC_0298

DSC_0299

DSC_0300

They aren’t spooked by cars, so you can quietly pull off the road, turn off your engine and take pictures. These were with a relatively inexpensive 500mm mirror lens.

Wild Turkeys #birding

They’re back, they’re bold, and they’re native.DSC_0259
The turkeys are forming up into mixed flocks with several toms and a larger number of hens. In the next month they’ll partition into individual flocks with just one tom each. After the eggs hatch, we’ll see flocks of the chicks accompanying their father.
DSC_0264

DSC_0260

This Much and More

Djuna Barnes

If my lover were a comet
Hung in air,
I would braid my leaping body
In his hair.

Yea, if they buried him ten leagues
Beneath the loam,
My fingers they would learn to dig
And I’d plunge home!

Bei Hennef

D. H. Lawrence, 1885 – 1930

The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,
All the troubles and anxieties and pain
Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft “Sh!” of the river
That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here,
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,
It is large, so large, I could not see it before
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,
Troubles, anxieties, and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fulfillment,
You are the night, and I the day.
What else—it is perfect enough,
It is perfectly complete,
You and I.

A creek in the Okefenokee NWR, miles from anywhere.

Avebury

One of our favorite stops when visiting the UK is Avebury. It’s a world heritage sight and well worth the visit.

IMGP2500 The inner ring. We take a picture of our family at one of the inner stones every year. The stone doesn’t age. We do.
IMG_0050

IMGP1893

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This interior, from a reconstruction at the Museum of Wales (not Avebury) shows how the builders lived.

DSC_0861
The Kennet Long Barrow is a worthwhile walk from the centre of the village. This picture shows the kinds of people you run into. Serious and … not so serious.

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA
Blue Skipper from the meadow near Kennet Long Barrow
SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA
Offerings left inside the Kennet Long Barrow

IMGP0064DSC_0857 A view from Kennet Long Barrow showing Silbury hill.

Upon Shark #poem

Robert Herrick, 1591 – 1674

Shark, when he goes to any publick feast,
Eates to ones thinking, of all there, the least.
What saves the master of the House thereby?
When if the servants search, they may descry
In his wide Codpeece, (dinner being done)
Two Napkins cram’d up, and a silver Spoone.

Robert Herrick is better known for the line “Gather thee rosebuds while ye may.” He wrote many more poems and some, like this one, are biting. (pun intended) I wonder who “Shark” is, but could imagine were they English any of the three musketeers doing this to raise the money for drink.

Discovery

The gray path glided before me
Through cool, green shadows;
Little leaves hung in the soft air
Like drowsy moths;
A group of dark trees, gravely conferring,
Made me conscious of the gaucherie of sound;
Farther on, a slim lilac
Drew me down to her on the warm grass.
“How sweet is peace!”
My serene heart said.

Then, suddenly, in a curve of the road,
Red tulips!
A bright battalion, swaying,
They marched with fluttering flags,
And gay fifes playing!

A swift flame leapt in my heart;
I burned with passion;
I was tainted with cruelty;
I wanted to march in the wind,
To tear the silence with gay music,
And to slash the sober green
Until it sobbed and bled.

The tulips have found me out.

Florence Ripley Mastin

Tulips don’t grow well here in the South, so I picked a different Spring flower

The Ocean

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Ocean has its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Though there be fury on the waves,
Beneath them there is none.
The awful spirits of the deep
Hold their communion there;
And there are those for whom we weep,
The young, the bright, the fair.

Calmly the wearied seamen rest
Beneath their own blue sea.
The ocean solitudes are blest,
For there is purity.
The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
Unquiet are its graves;
But peaceful sleep is ever there,
Beneath the dark blue waves.

Sea Violet

H. D., 1886 – 1961

The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank.

The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?

Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light—
frost, a star edges with its fire.

These aren’t actually violets in the picture, but it is an evocative image nonetheless.

Moth Moon

Florence Ripley Mastin

Moth Moon, a-flutter in the lilac tree,
With pollen of the white stars on thy wings,
Oh! would I shared thy flight, thy fantasy,
The aimless beauty of thy brightenings!
A worker, wed to Purpose and Things,
Earth-worn I turn from Day’s sufficiency.
One lethéd hour that duty never brings,
Oh! one dim hour to drift, Moth Moon, with thee!

About the moth

The picture shows a Luna Moth shortly after it has climbed out of its pupa case. It was taken in early spring, after the moth’s awoke from diapause – winter hibernation. I was lucky to catch it at the time.