FLYday - Common Tern In Flight Vocalizing

Common Tern, immature in flight vocalizing. Phippsburg, Maine summer, 2012

 

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends do best, fly.

FLYday - Juvenile Bald Eagle

Juvenile, Bald eagle, Phippsburg, Maine

(I took this photograph while wearing my bathrobe!)

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends do best, fly.

So Many Birds, So Little Time - Bald Eagles Like The Beach

Young Bald eagles, Atkin's Bay, Phippsburg, Maine April 18, 2011

The eagle on the left is older than the one on the right. Bald eagles like the beach!

"Hey! Give me back my iPod!" Bald eagles like listening to music.

"Watch me nail this landing!"

Bald eagles, two youngsters, probably 3rd and 4th year and an adult, Phippsburg, Maine April 19, 2011

Remember that you can click on any of these pictures to see them larger. In the photo to the top right of the bottom collage, there are two eagles mixing it up so closely that they look like one.

     This is the time of year when I start gardening for other people, or "Weeding For Dollars." From now until July fourth, it's exhilarating! The brown months have folded seamlessly into the newness of the green months. The whole planet is coming on full force with blooming flowers, fresh air and signing birds. Over the winter I had become somewhat starved for birds. Our part of the earth, muffled in snow, didn't hold much for bird song. I'm a listener, too. I was so wanting for the sounds of birds that a few times, I imagined I heard birds when cracking, frozen branches and keening wind were the sources. Now, the trees and sky are alive! From every quarter, someone is singing, even me! I've been thinking when my back finally gives out, perhaps I 'll start a career in opera. I'm sure my children will be pleased that I have goals.

     I love the work, but like all things, sometimes it can be a real drag. There are the days when it's hot, buggy, or wet. This first part of the season, it's cold which will only give way to Black flies, mosquitoes, ticks and Brown Tail moth rashes. Have I mentioned Poison Ivy? But, for all of that, I am out of doors in gorgeous places. The gardens are beautiful, this I know because otherwise I'd have some explaining to do to myself. And I usually don't start talking to myself until the middle of August.

     I do get resentful though when I feel like I'm being taken away from photography. I often remind myself that toiling in other people's yards like a Bend-Over-Betty lawn ornament does give me opportunities to see amazing things. I almost always get a few photographs out of it, too. So many birds does make it hard to concentrate on weeds, though. I have to stop looking up for every tweet, chip and chur to pull, hack and tease. And rake. Then rake some more and rake again. And haul. There's so much to be done and so many distractions, yet so little time.

     I may be  jumping the gun by saying this, but I am finding the gardening work easier this year. Having  spent the winter working out and controlling my consumption, I've lost thirty seven pounds. At just five feet tall, so that's a load o' lard, over twenty four percent of myself, to be exact. So, I'm moving with comparative facility and energy this year. I was recently asked if I had some medical emergency that prompted the weight loss. "Yes," I said. "Oh dear! Are you alright? What was it?" the inquirer pried. "When bending over to tie my shoes meant holding my breath and suffering the spins, that was the medical emergency," I explained. They thought I was joking, but I wasn't. I've even given up red wine, which anyone who knows me would never have predicted possible. So, when I nonetheless had a full blown hallucination this morning, I was taken by complete surprise.

     I've slimmed down enough that I no longer dread looking in the mirror. I don't even avoid it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's true. It's been a decade since I've been able to stomach my own stomach. But today, I caught my reflection and saw that I have the beginnings of an abdominal six pack! Well, maybe only a four pack, and possibly merely better definition of a couple of rolls, but something different from what has ever jiggled hello to me from the mirror before. I have a  beach body! And I don't mean one of those human potato people that unabashedly parades themselves on the Volga River, either. I have always admired their guts, or perhaps I should say courage. Those portly women looking like half cooked dumplings in bikinis seemed to like themselves well enough nor have cared what anyone else thought. Their junk in the trunk wasn't enviable, but I have held their bravery in high regard.

   Now, I feel like a super hero with abs of steel and I'm shedding my bathrobe! I'm going to celebrate my newly remodelled temple with a belly piercing! About 1970, when I was fifteen, my mother wore a navel jewel. That was before body piercings unless one had come from the Congo or some other exotic place, but my mother came from Topsham, Maine. She was a mill worker with five children to feed, but she managed to have belly jewels!

     She wore several colored jewels which she interchanged to titillate my father. Revelling in her own outrageousness, she revealed  the jewels to us children when she swapped out the colors. "Look! I've found an emerald green jewel!" She would squeal with delight, lifting her shirt up for us to see. I was at once, horrified and captivated by her belly flesh which looked to me like cottage cheese. "How does she keep them in there?" I wondered to myself. "Glue? Suction?" I never dared ask. On what little TV programming there was then, men and women were not even shown in the same beds! Yet, my mother pranced around our tiny, gundgy kitchen flaunting a navel jewel. She staunchly believed she was doing us a favor by being a living example of not giving a damn what anyone thought of her body. Her parenting skills were way ahead of the curve in that regard. So, to honor her, and myself, I'm going for the gold: belly piercing it is. My deflated middle doesn't look like cottage cheese, though. It's more like a slumped Brie. Vive la France! I don't want a timid stud nor jewel for my navel novelty, either. I've commissioned my husband to find something unique from the dump. I'm thinking a chrome hub cap might do just the trick. The glinting disk should be visible from space. Be looking for me on the beach this summer with my new, shimmering field mark.   

...................................................................................

     Bald eagles do like the beach. They are usually found near water and in large numbers when there is enough food, like ducks and scavenged fish. The numbers of eagles in Phippsburg has increased tremendously in the past decade. I see 3-5 of them every day without trying and know of two active nests close by. I frequently see them when I'm gardening, though how I do this bent over to the ground is an as yet, undiscovered talent.  I have yet to see a Bald eagle sporting a navel jewel or belly piercing, but will report promptly if I do. The top series of photographs of the eagles on the beach was a lucky find after a long day of spring garden clean up. The two eagles are about a year apart. The eagle with the whiter head is the older one. Bald eagles are sexually dimorphic; males and females have the same plumage and only vary slightly in size. The second set of images was captured the day afterward, also while I was gardening. The two young eagles in the bottom collage are the same two that were on the beach. They could be siblings, but not nest mates. The mature Bald eagle flying with them is probably one of their parents.

     Golden eagles are seen in Maine on rare occasions. Though they are often confused with Bald eagles in various stages of plumage, they are not even closely related. Plentiful in the western Rockies, Golden eagles are birds of mountainous areas that hunt mammals and other birds. Though Golden eagles have a different body shape than Bald eagles, both birds as juveniles have longer tails, broader wings and stouter bills than the adults. A young Bald eagle may look to the inexperienced eye like an adult Golden eagle.

     Bald eagles have brown feathers speckled with white usually until they are five years old. They are sexually mature when they have white heads. They may develop fully balded heads as early as three years, but that's very rare. A significant field mark is leg covering. Golden eagles' legs are completely feather covered, while a young Bald eagles' legs are bare, like little boys wearing nickers before big boy pants. Golden eagles are most easily confused with Bald eagles as first year juveniles when they have a white rump. In flight, as juveniles, they also show white under their wings. Bald eagles also have white under their wings as juveniles through their second year. This is the plumage phase when less experienced birders are apt to erroneously report having seen a Golden eagle. I've done it myself. Zut alors! In birding as in medicine, we say "If you hear hoof beats, think horse, not zebra." In Maine, if you see a funky looking eagle, it could be a Golden, but it's more likely to be a Bald eagle that hasn't come into its star spangled, balded glory. It's simply not mature enough to flaunt its navel jewel.

Thanks for some of the information to:

Wikipedia.com

Sibley, D.A., The Sibley Guide To The Birds (2001), Knopf: New York (2000), pp. 126-127

A Face Only A Mother Could Love - Turkey Vulture & Bald Eagles

The Bald eagles have been very busy with the seal pup carcass. They have been soaring about and sitting vigil in the trees. There have been two adults, definitely a male and a female based on side by side size comparisons. I think the one sitting on the pier is the male as it looks more slender and slightly smaller than the one ravaging the carrion. There is also a juvenile. I'm guessing second to third year. The juvie looks as if it is double banded. It is probably the offspring of the pair who I'm sure are the parents of The Butchie Boys. That would make Junior here a sibling to The Butchies, though not a nest mate. There have also been ravens and crows and of course, gulls interested in the pup remains.
     I have had a reader wish for me a Moon tide to take it away and another suggestion that I dump lime on the carcass. I'll put up with the wafting of rotten meat, thank you. Although, last night while I was sitting on my deck having a glass of wine and chatting with my husband, the stench was pretty intense. I had to keep shooing flies from the rim of my glass. I guess I should have been drinking faster to keep them away. Nonetheless, I would not alter the carcass. It's a naturally occurring event in a natural place. I'm fascinated by the birds and beasts that are drawn to it, not to mention the millions of insects and organisms that I can't even see! Plus, I'm hoping that eventually, I'll be able to get the seal skull. Cool!

The majestic and pretty animals aren't the only ones that cotton to the carrion. This lone Turkey vulture tilted around a few times before landing on our roof deck. David and I were married on the very spot where it stood. I consider myself very lucky to wake up each morning to David's smiling face. Can you imagine waking up to this face every day?

"Honey, have you thought about a nose job?"

 

Did you know that the Greek tragedy, Prometheus Bound took place on our pier? Prometheus intercepted Zeus' plans to wipe out the human race right here in Phippsburg, Maine.

    Turkey vultures are wide spread around the world. In Maine, they are migratory. Some of them go as far as South America. Their enormous, six foot wing span casts an ominous shadow when they pass. 'Buzzards,' as they are sometimes called, find their food mostly by sight. They can actually see the gasses that arise from decomp. (They always say that in crime shows, one cop to another at crime scenes, "Lue! Smell the holy decomp.!"). Birds have the sensory devices to detect smell, but for most it's not highly developed. Odors dissipate quickly in tree tops and the sky where birds usually hang out, so they don't have much use for smell. Vultures are an exception with a highly developed sense of smell. They have a nasal septum which is hollow so you can see through to the other side.  I've seen kids with ear lobe expanders that look like that. To me, they both beg the question "Why?"

Thanks to Wikipedia for information on Turkey Vultures.
For more information on avian sense of smell, click here.

It's NOT A Peregrine! Red-tailed Hawk Youngster and The Butchie Boys - Latest Installment

 I just came back from three days at the New England Camera Club Council conference (NECCC) in Amherst, Massachusetts. It's three days of lectures and workshops from 8 AM to ten PM or whenever you may drop like a rock before that. The campus is huge, so there's a tremendous amount of power walking from one event to the next. I stay in the dorms and eat in the student cafeteria. It's photography boot camp. The NECCC conference is largest event of its type in the northeast and has about 2,000 attendees. The lecturers are photographers from all over the world and they are world class. They are the big names from National Geographic, Conde Nast and other travel magazines, photographers to the rich and famous for portraiture and weddings and the biggest stock agency names in the business. There are also zoologists, ornithologists, geologists and others who in the name of science picked up cameras (usually to support scientific papers for journal submissions) and got really good at photography. It's an inspirational, educational, exhilarating and exhausting total immersion event. Oddly, though, there's not too much actual photography going on amongst the attendees. It's more about learning from other people, not being behind your own lens. There's also just not too much time to do anything other than stand in the food line and run from one class to the next, hoping you'll squeeze in a minute to find a bathroom before you find a seat. The NECCC does put together some fantastic staged photo shoot events, though. Every year it's something different. This year, among other smaller events, they had scheduled a paratrooper group to jump onto the campus with colored smoke, flags and other stuff. It probably doesn't surprise you that that isn't really my thing. I was with some photographer friends who were in to it though, so I got my gear and prepared to tag along.

     Since the first day I had set foot on campus, I had heard vocalizing of hawks and they were close! Seven times I saw them on tops of buildings and window ledges seventeen stories up. They had been distracting to me, almost taunting from on high.  I was not so much interested in the paratroopers as I was getting shots of those hawks somewhere on the campus. I had the lens for that job on my camera, not a lens for guys jumping out of planes tied to a silly sack. On the way to breakfast, crossing a barren quad which sported a single, aging spruce tree, I heard the birds again. Honestly, on seeing them from afar and because of the persistent vocalizing, I had thought they were Peregrines. I know some of you will laugh and roll your eyes at that. I'll never live that down and I'll never give up on that quest, either! Two of them zoomed across the quad then landed on a building. I had seen as many as three together previously, so this wasn't surprising. I'm quite sure it was two parents and a fledgling. They were being harassed by Northern Mockingbirds which are abundant on the vast University of Massachusetts campus. I thought, rats! They were gone again. But I listened and could hear them close as I continued to the dining hall. In the one rag-tag tree on the dried up quad I could just make one out. Sure enough, it was there eating a Red squirrel which it must have tagged on it's trip across the quad. I thought it was fitting that it was having its breakfast just outside of the dining hall.
     Of the 2,000 people there, at least half of whom crossed that same quad at about the same time, I'm the only one that found it in the tree and had the right lens on at the right time and the right skill set developed for the image captures. Many lined up behind me and fired off, I could hear them clicking away at my flanks and behind me. I pished a couple of times to get the bird to look at me. A woman said, "Hey! What's that noise?" My eye glued to the view finder, I did not answer but pished again. A man responded, "Does that really work?" I pished again. The bird looked right at me. Not taking my eye from the camera, I said, "Don't know. What do you think?" Click, click, click. There was lots of oooooing and ahhhhhing, wonderment and "OH MY GODS!" Between classes, at least a dozen people approached me over the next couple of hours to ask if they could see the pictures of the bird. Ahhhhhhh. That was followed by a big pile of steaming scrambled eggs, bacon and desperately needed coffee.
     What I most love about wildlife photography over other types of image captures, like weddings or car advertisements, is that it gives me a chance to be great. Sometimes, I'm just in the right place at the right time in the right bathrobe and I get the shot. Wildlife photography gives a bungler like me a shot. Much like photojournalism, a wildlife image does not have to be technically great if it carries enough emotional impact. Ideally, it's technically flawless or near to, but that takes a back seat to the 'oooooh, ahhhhhhh' factor.
     When I took the photos of the hawk, I was wearing a dress. I know that doesn't sound like me, but bear with me: I had slept in the dress the night before. It's a cotton, short thing someone had handed down to me. I had taken it with me because I thought it would be good to sleep in and lounge around in. I did not intend to wear it out of the dorm. My girlfriend said it was cute and I should wear it, so after sleeping in it as I had intended, I wore it for the day. Technically, that makes the hawk photos 'Bathrobe Birding,' even though I was in Massachusetts wearing a dress.

Juvenile Red-tailed hawk dining on Red Squirrel on the UMass Amherst campus.

By the way, I did not even see the paratroopers. I hope you're not disappointed. I'm not. Life is about choices. I think that's a Weight Watchers slogan or something, isn't it? I'll always choose wildlife first and breakfast second.

Friday morning, on my way out of town at 5 Am, I checked on The Butchie Boys. They are doing a little more flapping and looking plenty cramped. I'll check again today. I'll bet they are ready to take the big leap any moment. I'll let you know.