… not all who wander are lost, or so says October’s calendar page. There have been many variations of this witty gem (if you’ll pardon MY pun here), dating as far back as the 12th to 13th century, but the quote is likely attributed to William Shakespeare who wrote “all that glistens is not gold” in the 16th century. The locale for this photograph is right here in Michigan at Tahquamenon Falls State Park, which encompasses nearly 50,000 acres and stretches 13-plus miles in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
As I have done for most of my 2023 posts marking a new month and turning over to a new page of my nature calendar, I am once again writing about a trek to Lake Erie Metropark, my favorite weekend venue for walking and taking photos. I have certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of my Metropark pass this year. You may recall my recent posts at that venue were filled with the excitement of seeing and capturing images of a sweet doe, the Osprey family, a Mute Swan family, a Wood duck and ducklings and my joy in getting up close and personal with a pair of Sandhill Cranes. These were all good times for sure and that “glitter” drew me back again and again.
But then one day, Saturday, July 22nd to be exact, I set out from the parking lot at the Shore Fishing area and, while the first hour of my trek was indeed a “walk on the wild side” it was not really what I had planned.
Walking on the wild side – it’s not what you’d think.
Really, if you go to this 1,607-acre venue with its three miles of shoreline and can’t scare up a few feathered friends, (besides Luc, the injured resident eagle who has no choice but to be there), you need new glasses or you need to find a new venue.
So, after several glittered-filled trips in a row, I hustled out there to see if I could continue my streak. Seeing wildlife at Lake Erie Metropark is not always a sure bet … but after three successful treks in a row, I had great expectations.
But, while some critters are great to see up close, there are others, like several wasps that insisted on buzzing around my face and the camera lens, which I could have done without. Although I had heard Tony Bennett’s signature song “I left my heart in San Francisco” umpteen times the day before on the day of his passing, I felt sure I should be crooning “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” instead. Why were these wasps buzzing around my face? I wasn’t wearing perfume, not did I have flowers in my hair. I finally gave up and left the Shore Fishing Bridge and would look for my Sandhill Cranes later.
So, the wasps were up close, but most of the critters were far away.
In the distance, I saw movement and there were several deer wading around the Water Lotuses.
One stopped munching long enough and looked at me as if to say “don’t be judgy – there are plenty of Lotuses to go around.”
I thought of the one deer I saw up close last year, knee deep in a Lotus bed, munching on those blooms and leaves, wherein we humans will pay a hefty fine for removing a single Lotus from the bed.
A shadow from a large bird passing overhead made me swivel my head up. Taking the photo in sun glare, I wasn’t sure what I saw and reasoned it might be an Osprey from the fire station Osprey family or most likely a Turkey Vulture.
I was happy to discover when going thru my photos weeks later that I had seen an adult Bald Eagle, albeit the shot is a bit fuzzy.
And, speaking of Bald Eagles, I stopped at Luc’s cage as I always do to say “hey” and chitchat a bit. When I arrived, Luc was in a sour mood, glaring down at a small dog that was barking at him.
The dog finally cowered behind its owner’s knees and peered out at me when I gave it a look for disturbing the peace.
I was lucky to get a few photos at the marsh near the boathouse dock …
At the beginning of the Trapper’s Run Trail I stopped to take this photo of a park bench with its sweet sentiment.
I have a collection of equally sweet park bench sentiments from Bishop Park to share in a later post.
There was a scrawl professing love on the wooden overlook …
There were zero Barn Swallows on this day – they must’ve been sleeping in.
Lots of cattails filled the marshy areas.
The American Lotus beds were just “getting there” – no blooms and the leaves weren’t that large yet.
But there were WILDflowers to take note of … here are a few of them.
On what had been a hum drum jaunt, I decided it was time to leave as I was feeling a little wilted from the sun and photo pickings had been scarce. Enroute to the car, I stopped again at the Shore Fishing bridge, hoping the wasps were picking on someone else. They were – whew!
Here I saw a Great Blue Heron doing its best “Where’s Waldo” impression, as it was embedded in one of many Water Lotus beds.
And there were my Sandhill Crane friends, similarly wading through the marsh.
I stopped at the Fire Station and only one Osprey was lurking about that morning.
So I guess my “walk on the wild side” was tame, but hopefully you won’t find it lame.
While driving home, I decided to bop over to Memorial Park, a fortuitous stop and what became a bonus post for me after I encountered the cellist and violist, a tattered butterfly and many tattered trees.
So maybe my greed for glitter was rewarded in the end after all.
And, Fall could not come soon enough as this Summer’s erratic weather has left me totally undone.
Many of my blogging pals and followers in North America and beyond have been sizzling like steaks or burgers on the grill and Southeast Michigan has had its share of wonky weather too. After a three-week drought in June, Mother Nature turned on the showers, with more rain than usual, giving us one of the wettest Summers in recent history and resulting in lush lawns, the likes of what you’d see in the Springtime. The Robins were happy for that rain which brought lots of worms and everywhere birds splashed happily in shallow makeshift birdbaths the result of potholes and uneven roadways.
Here in Michigan we similarly sweltered with humidity and heat spikes that brought erratic weather as Mother Nature continued on her mission to wreak havoc with multiple types of weather misery here, there and everywhere. The topics of hurricanes, tornadoes, torrential rain, earthquakes and wildfires have filled our respective news feeds for months in what climatologists tell us was the hottest Summer recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe even on Earth – yikes!
And, as we processed that info, there was the usual round of jokes about the endless hot weather, with suggestions on how to bake cookies on your vehicle’s dashboard, or cook lasagna in your metal mailbox. Fellow blogger Shelley reported their driveway was 128F/53C and a snake never finished slithering across that concrete, as it cooked itself first – ugh!
The temperatures were red-hot for the 4th of July and Labor Day weekends.
Then, on those occasions when the hot weather cooled down radically for one day, we laughed at memes like “the temperature went from 90 to 70 like it saw a state trooper” (even though you don’t need me to tell you that a weather switcheroo like that really isn’t all that funny at all).
Southeast Michigan was impacted by seven tornadoes in the month of August. We had torrential rain and severe flooding on August 23rd racking up a month’s worth of rain (3.5 inches/8.9 centimeters) in six hours. The following day, the humidity and dew point levels were equal and extraordinarily high helping to fuel six tornadoes on the evening of August 24th. Those tornadoes touched down and did damage, all within 15-40 miles from my home. I won’t lie to you about how scared I was that night as I anxiously watched while severe weather approached. I did some virtual hand-holding with a friend, prayers were said more than once, then, at 10:40 p.m., with my emergency radio in hand, I donned a bicycle helmet and headed to the basement to await the all-clear that the closest tornado had passed by.
While thankfully that particular tornado never reached my City that night, just 15 miles away, an EF-1 tornado raced through Lake Erie Metropark’s golf course and its 105 mph wind and 5.4-mile (8.6 kilometer) rampage ended at the Detroit River. Other tornado damage in the nearby Gibralter area was still visible nine days later as I drove down West Jefferson Avenue to Lake Erie Metropark on September 2nd. Even though the bulk of the damage had been cleared from the main road, the sight of a huge fir tree snapped in half like a toothpick, massive tree branches littering front yards everywhere and even Phragmites reeds bent over sideways from the fierce 90 mph wind reported that night in Gibralter were worrisome.
Multiple high wind events this Summer worried me …
… as I imagined the same dead tree that dropped branches and caused a downed power line and fire in my backyard on December 2nd might have another episode. A few nights I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning, ready to head out the door if another downed wire/fire occurred.
We did have some wildfire smoke to contend with this year, but I really didn’t grumble as that weather woe seemed mild compared to how the rest of the world was suffering with each catastrophic weather event.
So I embrace the arrival of Fall … glorious Fall, even though the long-term weather prognosticators tell us this strong El Niño will bring a warmer-than-average Fall. I am still going to pack away the shorts and tee-shirts and don flannel shirts and jeans for those nippy mornings.
On a positive note, we are slated for a mild Winter – woo hoo, now that is something to crow about!
What does my little furry friend say about the Winter of 2023-24?
No, not Parker, or any of my other furry friends at the Park, where their peanut-stashing ratio in late Summer has been “eat one, bury one” but, as the chillier air settles in, often more peanuts go into the ground than the mouth. Begging increases, running over to sit on haunches and look extra cute as each walker passes on the perimeter path, even those that have never tossed them a peanut. (“Oops, so sorry to have bothered you, you don’t feed me, but you have a friendly face.”) So, I compensate and help them out even more in the Fall and Winter months as you know if you’ve been following this blog for a while.
I was actually mentioning my little friend below, a Woolly Bear Caterpillar, that I saw at Council Point Park a few weeks ago. The Woolly Bear Caterpillar is specially adapted to survive in freezing temperatures and will spend its Winter hunkered down somewhere and cocooning, much like some of us will do. That caterpillar will emerge as an Isabella Tiger Moth next Spring. If folklore is to be believed, the legend of the Woolly Bear Caterpillar is that the upcoming Winter can be predicted by the size of the segments in its brown and black “bands” i.e. the wider the rust-colored bands are on the back of the Woolly Bear Caterpillar, the more severe the Winter weather will be; narrower rust bands means a good and mild Winter. Hmm.
So let’s apply that reasoning to my furry friend below:
These scarecrow and harvest pics were taken on a recent stroll around the ‘hood. I honed in on the houses that always decorate, often with the same décor from year to year. I enjoy seeing scarecrows and the jeweled colors that signify Autumn’s arrival.
Forget those lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer – my favorite season of all has arrived.
I am all over the map reporting my walks of late. The truth is, I’m trying to mix up my meanders a bit so it doesn’t seem like it’s the same woodsy walk for every Monday post. So, I’ve been cherry picking walks from different seasons and venues, like this quick trip to Humbug Marsh wayyyyyyy back on Mother’s Day, May 14th which left me filling up the photo card with still more gosling shots. I just couldn’t help myself because who can resist seeing goslings’ cute, fuzzy yellow bums whether they are waddling, wiggling or even mooning me?
Even though I didn’t stay long, a few more feathered friends gave me some fun pics to share in this post with a topic of “in sync” – so please read on.
On a quest for a Kestrel.
Do you remember the two photographers I met here at Humbug Marsh last December? We showed up to photograph a Long-tailed Duck with its unique black-and-white plumage after reading about its arrival in a post at this venue’s Facebook site. Those two birder/photographers regaled me with their stories of the resident American Kestrel, a petite and colorful Falcon that usually hangs out in a tree near the exit road, plus a mated pair of Wood Ducks that often show up in the Monguagon Wetlands. There were sightings of Trumpeter Swans too. I told them I felt lucky to see Egrets and Great Blue Herons around the Delta and marshy areas, or the large flock of Cormorants (a/k/a a “gulp”) that roost in several trees across from the fishing pier.
So, armed with these newfound birdie tips, I aimed to find and photograph any or all of these birds in 2023.
I often do a fly-by at Humbug Marsh.
The Humbug Marsh Unit of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge is located between Lake Erie Metropark and Elizabeth Park, two of my favorite large park venues. Multiple times this year, I simply turned off Jefferson Avenue and stopped at Humbug Marsh. It’s likely mid-day when I arrive there and after walking around those bigger venues, at Humbug Marsh I often cheat and do a “fly-by” while driving the road around the Delta and Refuge, scoping out Egrets, Herons or something else to wow me.
This guy or gal would make me stop.
No luck yet on the Kestrel or the Wood Duck pair, but that’s fine too … I won’t be greedy after all of 2022’s finds and I’ll keep trying.
On this day, however, it was coolish and I was not ready to go home yet, even after a long marsh meander at Lake Erie Metropark, so I stopped to hang out here. While no Wood Ducks or Kestrels crossed my path that day, I got a few interesting shots to show you, plus I had a little theme going with my feathered friends, i.e. “In Sync” hopefully which will give you a smile..
So what was happening on this walk?
I felt a little like the Killdeer in the picture up top … always looking ahead and forging forward while using my long legs to propel me around this venue. I’m always mindful not to step on an Eastern Fox Snake, the likes of which live in this 300-year-old Old Growth Forest, so I like the non-rustic trails that involve walking on the raised platform best …
… and in walking on that raised platform is how I saw the Vernal Pond (or what used to be a pond). It was dry as a bone!
For sure I would not be seeing those cute singing frogs known as “Spring Peepers” today. Sadly, there was nothing to see here – there really once was a pond and this was even before the drought-like conditions in June when we endured three weeks with no rain. Yikes!
After stepping off the platform and scanning the ground for slithering snakes, I looked up and got a few tree shots before training my eyes on the ground once again.
I like the Shag Bark Hickory …
…and this tree photo I took because the tree was a little odd looking.
This bench looks peaceful and at least I would not have to study the trail for snakes, but I moved on.
Feathered friends in sync.
Well, the walk soon became a bit boring as I scuffed through last year’s brittle leaves on the rustic trails, saw a few wildflowers named “Spring Beauties” …
… I began to head back to the car … then things got interesting.
A family of geese was waddling in the weeds. Mama gathered her little darlings, counted beaks …
… then set them free to grab breakfast. Now, if it were squirrels, they would look for a human toting peanuts, but the goslings headed for the grass to graze. They found a patch of grass which was not particularly green yet as we were having a chilly May.
They did everything in sync … eating …
… mooning me …
… waddling down to the water. Look at those wiggle butts go! 🙂
A quick swim might lead to some tasty seaweed or other aquatic plants – who knows? Behold: a little synchronized swimming one year before the Olympic event.
Three grown-up geese took to the skies – how’s this for in sync flying?
A trio of seagulls perched on an info sign after they landed there simultaneously … still practicing social distancing I see.
These two seagulls dove down to this post to perch at the exact same time. Well great minds think alike, right? Except, who was going to have “perching rights” to sit here like the King of the Hill? Are perching rights based on seniority, or some birdie-type of pecking order perhaps? Maybe a level of coolness? Or is it first-come, first-served? Clearly both seagulls were keeping their eyes on the prize, but they couldn’t both land or stay there. One flew away after a little game of seagull-style “na-na-na-na-na” ensued. I don’t speak seagull, but suffice it to say a whole lot of screeching was going on. Here, have a look.
Great – you win buddy, but they say it is lonely at the top.
It’s National Grandparents Day 2023, a Hallmark-type holiday to collectively celebrate and honor our grandparents. I never met my paternal grandparents as they both passed away when my father was in his teens, but I’ve written at least a half-dozen posts reflecting on my maternal grandmother, Minnie Goddard. I suppose I’ll eventually run out of anecdotes about “Nanny” as I fondly called her, but I still have a few more up my sleeve.
I actually planned this post for Grandparents Day 2022, but due to Queen Elizabeth’s passing a few days earlier, instead I focused on the topic of tea, a beverage Queen Lizzy and Nanny both enjoyed.
As most of you know, I have no siblings and no family members. Through the years, Mom used to tell me about visiting HER grandparents, 60 miles away, always on holidays and every Summer. Mom said she was close to her grandmother. Here she is with her grandparents. I assume the first picture was taken at some type of celebration judging from the corsage and dress clothes (her cousin Ted is to the right).
This photo was taken at her grandparents’ farm.
Mom was devastated when her grandmother passed away in 1953. Her opinion of her grandfather was that he was a cantankerous old man, an opinion I shared about my own grandfather, including in this forum.
Mom would recount how on hot Summer nights, the entire family would cool off by sitting on the wraparound porch. Here is a photo of Mom on that porch.
When the Ariss homestead was to be sold after her grandfather’s passing, Mom asked for two items from her grandmother’s kitchen, a blue cake plate and a teapot. These vintage items have been part of my country kitchen’s décor for decades.
Nature’s bounty.
Each Summer when friends/fellow bloggers Diane and Ruth are posting pictures of the bounty of fruits and veggies from their respective gardens, it pulls at my heartstrings a little. The tasty rewards from their efforts remind me of my mom’s tales about her family’s annual August trip to her grandparents’ farm to help bring in the crops, harvest the fruits and veggies and “put up” the abundance of nature’s goodness for the long Winter ahead.
Likewise, when I got lost on a country road enroute to the sunflower festival a few years ago, I passed many driveways with makeshift produce stands. They reminded me of Mom’s stories about farm life circa 1930s – 1950s, plus triggered nice memories of my own family’s Sunday drives to country farm stands to buy tomatoes, new potatoes, green beans and ripe, juicy peaches for cobbler. Once home, we didn’t bother with the “B” or the “L” as we’d just have the “T” … sliced tomatoes on buttered toast. If I close my eyes I can picture Mom enjoying a juicy beefsteak tomato over the kitchen sink to catch the drips, the tomato in one hand, salt shaker in the other.
So many nice memories revolve around food and family don’t they?
You say “to-may-to” and I say “to-mah-to” … some just say “yum”.
MY grandparents were NOT a match made in Heaven. I’m surprised he cracked a smile in this photo. Nanny was without a smile however.
I truly believe the only thing my grandparents ever collaborated on was the annual ritual of making chow chow, a tasty tomato relish which I’d describe as a thick salsa. (Okay … well maybe they collaborated as to my mom, Pauline and her younger brother Ronny too.)
As to anything else, my grandparents fought like cats and dogs.
I never heard my grandfather call Nanny an endearment, let alone by her given name, Wilhemina, nor her nickname “Minnie” and instead he muttered and mumbled constantly, or grunted in response to anything she said to him, often cursing back at her. But then, she never called him “Omer” – instead she referred to him as “the Old Man” (he was 14 years older than her). They were a perfect example of how opposites attract – she was kind and gentle …
… while he was a miserable old coot.
But together they made quite the team as they turned out enough jars of green and red tomato chow chow to fill the shelves of their fruit cellar until the following Summer.
Those bushel baskets of green and red tomatoes, plus a lot of onions, came from Ariss, the “souvenirs” from their annual sojourn to the farm. They didn’t “put up” anything else to my knowledge and likely there was no recipe as Nanny learned the art of making chow chow from years of helping her mom.
Nanny was not a good cook, (just like me), except for her Sunday pot roast. If you were a visitor to the house, she’d fix you a ham sandwich and a cup of tea the minute you walked in the door (without asking you first), whereas my grandfather immediately went into the living room to watch wrestling or the hockey game, or he’d go and sit outside depending on the season. My grandfather made dinner every day but Sunday. Mom said she never knew if this was because Nanny’s cooking was so bad, or he got home from work earlier.
My grandparents were not fickle about this pickly treat.
When the pair collaborated on making green and red tomato chow chow, my grandfather would sit in the basement peeling and chopping onions, a matchstick with the sulfur part in the corner of his mouth to thwart the strong fumes and keep his eyes from watering. (At least that matchstick kept him from his usual foul mouth and outbursts that accompanied his ever-present sullen demeanor.)
After filling a big bowl with diced onions, he dutifully took them upstairs to join the tomatoes and spices which would then simmer in a huge pot on the kitchen stove. After endless hours, maybe even days, of this collaborative effort, the wooden shelves in the fruit cellar were lined with green and red tomato chow chow, which the family slathered on eggs, meat, ham sandwiches, or simply spread on toast. This ritual lasted for decades until my grandfather’s death in 1969.
When I was young and we visited my grandparents, Nanny would send me down the creaky wooden basement stairs to the fruit cellar to retrieve a few bottles to eat then and/or take home. Not only did I fear falling through the steps, I was afraid of spiders and the light from a solitary light bulb did not calm my fears in the least.
Stirring up the memory pot (in more ways than one).
So how did this become an annual ritual? My great-grandparents, Andrew and Catherine Klein, had a farm in rural Ariss, a community near Guelph, Ontario. Nanny had eight siblings – there were three girls and six boys. One by one the boys grew up and married, settled in the area and farmed, like their father. The boys remained close to one another and led similar lives, but Nanny and one of her sisters moved to the big city, a/k/a Toronto, to escape the farm wife/farm life existence. Toronto was the hubbub of manufacturing, jobs were plentiful and the sisters got factory jobs right away and each eventually married, but always returned to Ariss for every holiday gathering.
Through the years Mom would be wistful about those long-ago, huge family gatherings at the Ariss homestead, even though the Summer get-together involved hard work and could hardly be defined as a vacation. For example, my grandfather had two weeks off from Gutta Percha & Rubber Manufacturing Company, a plant which made tires, hoses and rubber boots. My grandmother had an equal amount of time off from Planter’s Peanuts or Rowntree’s Chocolates, two factory jobs she held when my mom was growing up. During those two weeks spent in Ariss, they were immersed in a round-robin helping venture, from the elders to the rest of the extended family. My grandfather helped harvest the crops and bale the hay, while my grandmother joined her mother in the hot farmhouse kitchen.
I understand my grandmother had berry bushes everywhere, so there were lots of berries to pick for preserves, pies and cakes. Sometimes a cousin or two would run over from another farm to visit and they were relegated to berry-picking chores. The kids were dispatched with big buckets and told not to come back to the house until their bucket was filled to the brim. Being out in the hot sun and toting that heavy bucket might have made it tough being a farm kid back then in the early 1930s, but the cousins made it into a game and challenged each other to see who could pick the most berries. Mom’s favorite pie was red currant and for years, every Summer Mom and I would scour the local farm markets for a couple of pints of red currants so she could relive her youth and enjoy this tart and tasty pie once again. Mom would tell me the farmhouse screen door didn’t do a stellar job of keeping the flies outside and her grandmother would be swatting at flies sitting on a coffeecake in the back kitchen while asking her granddaughter “is that a fly or a currant Pauline – my eyes are bad?”
With the berry picking done, the cousins moved on to collecting tomatoes, still warm from the sun …
… then similarly toting them into the house so those tomatoes would eventually be turned into chow chow.
My mom never did any of the annual canning rituals like her grandmother and mother, but she always loved this tomato-y treat. Whenever we went to a fruit and veggie stand while out on a Sunday drive in the country, she’d always be scanning their offerings for a similar product.
One time I went to pick up some holiday goodies for Christmas at a local Honey Baked Ham store and saw they had red tomato relish. I brought home a couple of bottles which were gone almost immediately as Mom declared they tasted just like what she remembered, so I bought her a case for her Valentine’s Day birthday and tomato chow chow became a regular staple in this house until the store stopped carrying it.
If you’re wondering why you never heard of tomato chow chow, Google confirms it is a Canadian treat, (though not as famous as poutine). 🙂
Happy Labor Day! Today’s post features the first calendar page of the new month as its header image. The venue is Wharariki Beach in New Zealand. I love the quote and agree – do you?
Planning for weekend walks is exasperating in the Summertime. I keep a list of Summer festivals handy, not to attend them, but instead to stay clear of them, as it means blocked-off streets and traffic snarls, which, compounded with perpetual construction, is a pain. But the biggest factor that hinders long weekend walks is the weather.
Such was the case on this walk taken on Sunday, July 9th. I spent the long Fourth of July holiday working in the house, trying to declutter, after walking each morning at Council Point Park … all hot, humid days – ugh. Thus, my first day back to work after the holiday had me already eyeing the weekend weather ahead … yay, both days looked promising with no rain and bright skies, perfect for long walks and enjoying some “me time”. But, by Friday afternoon the great weather forecast suddenly imploded … “sorry folks, while Saturday’s not a total washout, we will have rain and storms several times, so be sure to be weather aware as you go through your day.”
Okay, so Sunday would be my day. Then Sunday’s 5:00 a.m. weather forecast called for a chance of rain and cloudy skies would rule until late afternoon – sigh. I hopped online and saw a 6% chance of rain. Did I really want to be in the middle of this 1,600-acre park with its three-mile-long shoreline and it pours down raining? So, with some trepidation, I set out anyway, figuring I’d be back long before the late afternoon rain began.
My shortest walk ever at this venue was very fulfilling!
Driving through the Park I decided due to the rains/storms the day before, the Cherry Island Trail and Trapper’s Run Trail would be soggy and muddy; likewise the area around Luc’s cage has muddy patches as well. Cove Point with its paved trail was a safe bet, I could park nearby and check out the progress of the Lotus beds after all the recent heat and humidity.
As I drove along the road leading to Cove Point, I remembered to look near the Shore Fishing area to see if, by chance, the Sandhill Cranes and potential offspring were still in the same area as last time.
It was my good fortune to see the adults, strolling right next to the small Shore Fishing parking lot. I pulled in, parked quickly and hopped out. One glance at the sky told me I would take those Crane shots, peruse the Lotus beds and get the heck out of Dodge very soon.
I closed the car door as quietly as I could to avoid spooking the pair, then scanned the grass for a Colt (Sandhill Crane baby), but saw none. I guess the pair found me harmless as they returned to grazing, preening and occasionally stepping around to forage for something new and tasty. Lucky for me, I could tell the grass was freshly mowed, so no worries about tick risks like last time.
The pair meandered around and I got pretty close to them until they headed to the water in an area where I saw them last time I was here.
I decided to climb up the hill to the offshore fishing vehicle bridge …
… but they quickly embedded themselves in the reeds.
I figured I had enough shots of them anyway, so I whirled around to walk up the hill, then saw a flash of white across the street; “Egrets” I told myself, but hustled over the vehicle bridge road to find a pair of Mute Swans and their three cygnets huddled in a corner of the marsh.
I was lucky to get this shot …
… before the family queued up and sped away, the parents, like bookends on either side of their cygnets.
In no time, they crossed the marsh.
I headed over to Cove Point …
… where I spotted this fairly large bird guarding a nest that rested on a tree branch. Later, doing a reverse Google image search, I learned it was an Eastern Kingbird.
With an eye to the sky, I sped over to the wooden overlook and peered at the marshy mess … not just alliteration here … green goop was everywhere. Pond Lilies floated on green swamp gunk in the lagoon – just pads as no blooms had formed yet.
On the other side of the overlook I glimpsed the biggest bed of Lotuses which were still a work in progress. I snapped this photo of some trash looking like a shark fin.
Even the Herons and Egrets, ever-constant shore birds in the lagoon, were no-shows that day.
I retraced my steps then quickly exited the overlook to walk the Cove Point shoreline. At ground level I checked out the Lotuses which were scanty with no blooms. No surprise as they really don’t flourish until mid-to-late August.
A Mama Duck hurried her ducklings into a patch of raggedy-looking Lotus leaves, lest I want to take photos of them. I played paparazzi anyway, but you have to squint to see them and, just like last time, once I sorted through my photos, I discovered they were Wood Ducks, not Mallards – my second sighting this season – no Papa Wood Duck with his exquisite plumage was present though.
As I stood on the shoreline, I heard a loud squawking noise which I now recognize as the call of a Sandhill Crane. Surely those two skinny Cranes I photographed were not making THAT much noise. I looked up in the air – no Cranes passing overhead so maybe Mister and Missus were having a spat.
I kept glancing at the dark cloud over my head and decided to head back to the car. My timing was impeccable. As I got into the car, it started drizzling. By the time I got home it was a steady rain. I guess gambling on those rain chance percentages wasn’t too smart on my part. A 30-mile car trip, a 45-minute trek, with a bounty of birds to behold until Mother Nature played spoiler.
Linda Schaub
WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 