Sunday, February 19, 2006
Today marks the return of the robin to Mystic. Large voracious flocks of them have descended on the berries and trees here. I tried counting them, but they were flitting to and fro in large numbers. At one point there were at least 25 stripping the remaining berries from the 4 or 5 small holly bushes along our front walk area.
We’ve always loved Robins, but ever since Idaho they have had a very special place in our hearts. They nested right outside our window and let us watch them raise two broods of chicks. In part it was all the more exciting as it was confirmation of our efforts to rehabilitate the backyard environment where we lived. We still have the time-lapse video we took. Two years of hard work paid off with the Robins, hummers, hummingbird moths and many others.
Like the Robins our activity here has been a bit sparse. Hopefully that will pick up a bit. We do have a couple of entries in the wings and we’ld like to catch aeveryone up on our doings over the late fall and winter. It’s been busy — some good, a little bad — basically life…Abundantly.
Sorry about the lack of updates…things have been a bit crazy around here lately.
Finally everything is off to Texas for the Show at the 1550 Gallery. We ended up sending 22 items, mostly scarves but also some bags and a pair of indigo shibori pants as well. When I wasn’t working on the show there was (is) school and then spending time with Johann. September is literally a blur. One festival, multiple trips to see parts of the whale trail, science experiments, just for fun outings, school, the show, giving Tammy time to sew…I didn’t get more than about 4 hours of sleep on any given night.
I think I’m going to sleep for a week!
Didn’t have much time for photography either, but luckily on Fridy I caught a few (almost 40!) herons and egrets gathered around a swampy pond during a break in the rain. Best of all there were three black crowned night herons!
The birds that have been at the Aquarium all summer are also making appearances at the Mystic Seaport… This Hyacinth Macaw is a rescued bird that has been rehabilitated and is now being trained to be used to humans again. A wonderful bird, he was being pretty vocal, calling out with a short beatiful call every few minutes. He was wonderful with Johann even though with his long tail feathers he is almost as big!
100% crop from a head shot. I really love the colors and textures on these birds!
This snowy egret displayed a wide range of behaviors during the 20 minutes or so I watched it hunt, at one point it started strutting across one of the pools. I thought it was just moving across the pool, but twice while strutting this way it with it’s head high, it quickly struck to the side, succeeding once in getting a fish.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
A juvenile common tern coming in for a landing on a small rock in the sound, forcing the adult that was occupying the rock off to find a new place to perch.
I spent an hour or so on one of the beaches down in Waterford the other day (the same place and day that the Mystic Whaler shot was taken). I just watched the sound and the shore birds along some of the rocks and jetties. The funny thing about many of these birds is that they see a place where another bird is “perched” and decide that it’s a nice spot to stop. Not that the rock itself is a nice spot – whether the rock is 20 square feet or a half a square foot – no, they decide to land in the exact couple of inches as one of the other birds.
The rock in this photo also was the site of this type of musical chairs game. Over the course of the hour I was there it must have been the temporary perch to at least 30 birds. Some left of their own accord to fly further down the beach, but most, like the adult in the photo, were “pushed” off by another bird landing. I watched cormarants, gulls and terns all displace each other, and even one female duck. It is often comical, especially if the “pushed off” one circles round and reclaims his spot. I watched one pair of cormorants (both juvenile double cresteds) play musical chairs like this with each other repeatedly on a piling in the Mystic estuary. They switched places about 10 times over the course of a 10-15 minute period.
