Photographing Birds in Flight

A few years back, I received a handsome tripod as a gift.  I’ve tried repeatedly to use it, but I always seem to point it in the wrong direction.  Bottom line, I don’t want to carry it when I’m out walking.  As it is, I look like a newbie journalist, my many-pocketed vest bulging with stuff I can never find and a camera and pair of binoculars criss-crossed like bullet holsters over the top.

Water, Water, Everywhere

“…Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink…”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We could find ourselves echoing the words of the Ancient Mariner if we don't pay close attention to our precious water supply. Unlike seabirds, human bodies lack the ability to desalinate sea water, and most of the water on our planet is in the oceans – a whopping 99 percent of it. Only the remaining 1 percent is usable by humans. And that tiny share is in peril.

The Conservatory Garden in Winter

The young boy played his flute, calling to birds; his companion lifted a snow-laden bowl where they might drink.  While sparrows flitted near in search of seeds, not one came to visit this snowbound pair.

Winter à la Sarasota

I have written before about our looong Floridian summers. About how we try so hard to live the outdoor life, faced with a seemingly endless parade of photo-opportunity days that give the lie to what is really a swamp-like climate. But the truth is that we spend all summer hiding out indoors in a sort of hibernating state. We go about our daily lives, moving sluggishly from air-conditioned homes to cars with matching temperatures and tinted windows - into shops, offices, malls and all manner of buildings with piped-in icy air where we take shelter from the invisible onslaught. Even then, the heat and humidity leave us damp before we can get from car to building. The only difference between night and day here is that the sun disappears. The temperature and humidity levels hardly change - it’s impossible to sleep without the air turned really low. Forget about cracking a window.

A Welcome Sound

This past summer, the Hudson Valley was dry and hot.  Ponds disappeared, turning beautiful vistas into tableaux of mud.  Turtles abandoned a log beached in waterless ooze.  Fewer insects meant fewer birds and dragonflies.  A catastrophe, albeit of a minor sort when thought of against the world at large.

Raining Acorns Redux

Today marks our first anniversary.

To mark the day, we are re-posting the inaugural post.

It’s raining acorns.  Last year I thought the sound was squirrels, harrying the leaves.  The sounds were scattered though, in space and time.  That should have been a clue, but I was too much a novice to connect the acorns strewn across our driveway with the noises in the woods.

Traveling in Wales: The Brecon Beacons

Of places to visit in Wales, the Brecon Beacons are typically overlooked in favor of Snowdonia and other higher peaks.  That’s a mistake, for the Brecon Beacons National Park is breathtaking in its beauty and full of things to see and do.

Photographing Birds in the Adirondacks

This year, we thought we knew the trick:  to steal off in a canoe right after breakfast and head to the far end of Elk Lake.  That way we were certain to come upon a great blue heron busy fishing before it was startled off by someone else.  That had worked the year before, after all.

Another Day in Paradise

As I stood gazing out at Elk Lake in New York's Adirondacks, a guest at the Lodge stepped up next to me and said, “Another day in paradise.”  That about sums it up.

As I Sit Itching

I don’t recall my first encounter with poison ivy, but I remember the first with poison oak.  Driving thousands of miles along I-80 was de rigueur among the college set those many years ago.  I commuted between Chicago and California and participated in all manner of things daft.  That included clambering down a cliff to the Pacific Ocean, clad in swimsuit and sandals, only to realize the way back was straight up.  It hadn’t seemed so steep going down, so why was it necessary to crawl through the bushes to reach the top?

Mother's Day on Mother Earth

Unlike our mothers on earth, Mother Earth is our life source from cradle to grave. Unlike our mothers, Mother Earth nurtures and supports us tentatively, ultimately striking back if we damage her. Sometimes she even hurts us with no provocation, with terrifying fury, or cold indifference. It’s easy to respect our mothers, to treat them well - it’s hard to do the same for that grand mother, given her unpredictable nature and our greedy impulses.

Photographing Birds in Louisiana

“Don’t worry if the feathers are blown.”  The voice over my shoulder belonged to our friend Marie.  In front of us, in the brilliant sun, were scores of great egrets, their feathers a blinding white.  We were looking out over a rookery where egrets gather to practice their rites of spring.  Marie, a professional photographer, was referring to overexposure so great that all detail would be lost.  Though I’d heard the term only once before, I knew I was in for it:  those egrets were white, and the sun was high in a cloudless sky.

Sleeping in the Swamp: Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin

If you travel by canoe through the river swamps of Louisiana, you may very well grow uneasy as the sun is going down.  You look around for a site—a place to sleep, a place to cook.  There is no terra firma. . . . You study the dusk for some dark cap of uncovered ground.  Seeing one at last, you occupy it, limited though it may be. . . . You have established yourself in much the same manner that the French established New Orleans.  So what does it matter if your leg spends the night in the water.

--John McPhee, The Control of Nature

For more than eighteen miles, the columns holding up Interstate 10 in Louisiana rise out of a swamp.  Not just any swamp, mind you, but the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp—the largest swamp in the United States, covering a third of the total land mass of Louisiana.  The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, as this portion of I-10 is known, is reputed to be the tenth longest bridge in the world.  Our goal was Butte La Rose, from which we would travel down back roads to find the houseboat where we were to stay, moored in the swamp, for four days.

Listening to Spring

A long, wide path at Audubon’s Buttercup Farm Sanctuary in Dutchess County, New York, abuts Wappinger Creek.  It’s a paradise for birds, yet not long ago, when snow and ice still reigned, few birds could be found.

Photographing Birds in Winter

The winter season calls for modifications to how you dress, how you handle your equipment and how you approach the picture-making process itself.  -Tim Fitzharris, National Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography

In winter, even birds that don’t migrate can be hard to find.  On these cold and snowy days, we see little on our walks:  a junco pecking at frozen ground, a crow settled on a high tree limb.  We thrill to spot what turns out to be a mockingbird, hunkered down in branches to escape the wind.

A World of White and Snowy Scents

Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.
-Wallace Stevens

Right now, I can’t imagine beyond snow.  It’s been falling all day again, though this time, not to much effect.  Deer tracks run everywhere:  they veer toward the hemlock, then, foiled by the fencing, veer back to open ground.  The paths break into ragged patches where deer scraped through to get at grass.

December

I have it on good authority that the snowflake has long been up at the crossroads of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in New York City.  Shop windows are already dressed for the coming holidays, and December 2nd is the date for lighting the Rockefeller Center tree.

The Weather Game

November is when Winter tries to make an early appearance in Southwest Florida. Summer will have none of it. After lulling us into a false sense of security by allowing a few mercifully cool days, Summer sends the usurper packing with a stealth move – an eleventh hour Hurricane.

The End of Daylight Savings Time

For those of us who are not, by nature, early risers, it’s unclear whether the end of daylight savings time is friend or foe.  In the morning, we make it a point of honor not to rise in the dark.  The end of daylight savings time foils our resolve, for daybreak arrives too early and wakes us up.

Abundance

A few days ago, when the cold weather lifted, the ladybugs were first to know.  They spun in the air and clung to the shingles.  They slipped inside the house and parked on the ceiling, hung from shade pulleys, and hugged the window screens.