bird life

On the beach

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:33:00 +0000

There is always a flotilla of Mallards down at Fort Trumbull Beach, in Milford. They are no dummies: they hang out there in all weathers, because someone who lives on the beach feeds them every day. God knows the Mallards and a few gulls were the only souls down there yesterday as the sun was setting and the most bitter of winds sliced through every item of clothing on my body. I had pledged to exercise this week after eating over Thanksgiving as if I were one of those poor foie gras ducks, but by the time Thursday came around, I hadn't got past noticing with some excitement that the gym just down the road from our new house is conveniently located right next to Rita's Ice Custard, which happens to purvey possibly the best frozen dessert ever invented. My week's exercise at Fort Trumbull lasted all of about four minutes before it felt as though there were hundreds of tiny razor blades implanted in my fingertips and I scurried back to the car. The ducks are in for the long haul, though...

The Emu in the Sky (aka, I'm still on a bit of an emu bender)

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Have you ever seen an emu's wings?

This question never crossed my mind until yesterday, when I began reading about emus' stabby, huge (not "quite small"!) bills. I guess that if I'd thought about emus' wings at all, I would have assumed they were that weird shaggy kind of pelt that emus have, as if they're wandering around wearing a blanket all the time.

But there is a reason you've never seen an emu's wings: they're underneath all that shagginess, and they're tiny. Smaller than a crow's. Of course, this makes sense, given that they hardly need wings when they don't fly and can run like something out of Jurassic Park.

The fear I had of them as a child is turning more into fascination and a kind of awe -- but I got a chill when I found the Aboriginal story of how the Emu in the Sky came to be.

The Emu in the Sky is not so much a constellation as a negative heavenly space: the shape of an emu's body formed not from stars but from dark patches of the Milky Way. The giant emu was consigned there for eternity by a husband exacting justice upon the bird for killing his wife, according to people from Papunya, in the Northern Territory.

If you fancy going to this link to a great article about Aboriginal astronomy, it's worth clicking through to the second picture in the slide show: an astonishing photo of the emu's shape visible in the night sky, mirroring an Aboriginal rock carving on the ground below, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, in Sydney.

Emus are still a bit scary

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 01:21:00 +0000

Do you remember when you were little and certain animals seemed very, very big and scary? Horses freaked me the hell out. Bison, too. I saw one bison my entire childhood, in a zoo, but it made a vivid impression. I will always remember its moth-eaten-looking coat; it's snorting, pawing hugeness; and my irrational conviction that I would some day find myself fronting one, without a moat and a fence between us.

Emus were right up there on my list of frightening animals. They were so much taller than me. Their necks were like furry snakes. Those giant eyelashes and great dark marbles for eyes, boring into you. The only reason the emus were actually staring was to see whether they liked the look of what you had on your sandwich, but that didn't stop me from thinking they were sizing up the best angle of attack. I most feared what they could do with those big triangular beaks.

Thank heavens I didn't know then what I know now: that it's their claws they use for defense, and those claws are strong enough to rip metal fences, and if cornered they kick with their big, three-toed feet. I guess I didn't notice the horrifying feet because I was too busy trying to keep an eye on their terrifying beaks, which always seemed to be erratically darting toward you on that serpentine neck, heading towards the above-mentioned sandwich . . . or, in one memorable case, a couple of Salada biscuits spread with margarine and Vegemite, which an emu snatched from my hands and seemed to quite enjoy. (For those who aren't familiar with this delicacy, Salada biscuits are like Saltine crackers. The best part about them was that when you stuck two of them together with Vegemite and margarine and then forcibly squished down on them with your chubby little fingers, the margarine and Vegemite would extrude out like tiny nubs of white and black spaghetti. Entertainment was much simpler before iPhones.) I'm sorry, Wikipedia, but the emu's bill is not "quite small." It's a gigantic pointy stabby implement.

When Frank found this video today of errant emus wandering the streets of western Sydney and disrupting traffic, I felt certain that as an adult, I would look at their beaks and bobbing heads and realize that my childhood perceptions were all wrong. In fact, seeing them against the suburban backdrop just highlighted how right I was to be awestruck by them. What incredible creatures they are. The way they move, the way they look so confident and inquisitive, the plumage on their backs that looks weirdly like shaggy fur, the general prehistoricness of them...which is no doubt why, as the guy in the pretty phenomenal hat in the video points out, they still don't know to look both ways before they cross the road.

Winter is on the way

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:11:00 +0000

Snow is in the forecast. Chickadees and titmice frantically load up at the feeder. Days get shorter. Birds that have spread out through spring and summer come together in flocks again. As the sun sets, there is the incessant flight of crows to their roost. Robins are massing. By day, geese strip the farm fields of summer's leftovers, then settle together in great rafts on nearby ponds. For comfort, security, and warmth? Or are they simply all attracted to the same sheltered places near dwindling food stocks? The mill pond at South Windsor is the avian Grand Central Station. All routes cross here.

Ceaseless honking. Sporadic squabbles. Strange outliers accepted. The solitary Snow Goose. The Barnacle Goose. The one Brant that doesn't know it's meant to be at the beach, not here in the middle of farmland. Four White-fronted Geese, whose orange feet not too long ago probably touched the earth of Greenland, which seems magical to me. The female Black Scoter bobbing limp at the water's edge, her life ending in this improbable place, never making it to the ocean for the winter. A Mallard hybrid who doesn't know his spiffy white bib sets him apart. The shabby-looking Common Merganser that I hope fattens up and makes it through the season.

It seems that every bird as the winter approaches knows that this is a good place to be. Rawk, there goes two Ravens overhead. Great Blue Heron. Red-tailed Hawk. And then there is the peculiar boy with the peculiar dog -- half black Lab, half Chow. The boy proudly proves the dog's Chow ancestry by prising open its willing mouth and showing off its purple tongue to me. "His name's Seamus," he says. "I'm trying to get him to catch one of these geese here, so I can eat it." He throws bread at the birds, which sail around him at a safe distance, watching with canny eyes. "Seamus is an alpha male. He'll attack and kill anything," the boy explains, as the purple-tongued dog snaffles the scattered bread, wags its tail, and lumbers over for a pat, oblivious of the waterfowl.

Things I am grateful for on Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:56:00 +0000

The clear New England sky, bare branches, the oxygen in my lungs, my heart beating in my chest, love and warmth and friends, acceptance, hope, life and memory and the fact that even those who are no longer taking in that oxygen and that crisp autumn sky are still here as long as they are in our memories.

The blog police are coming to get me

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:13:00 +0000

Pledging to write every day is tremendous. Structure, discipline, the repetition of writing, writing, writing -- these are really the only things that help you to improve your writing. The idea is awesome. You know what else is awesome? Sleeping. Sleeping is awesome, because you're horizontal and warm. You also have dreams. The dream is what made me suddenly jolt awake and realize that I had slept through my pledge to blog every day for NaBlowhateverit'scalledyoupeoplearelunaticshowcananybodysustainthis. There was a white ping-pong ball on the floor that I had to move, because -- for some very complicated reasons -- if I didn't move it, a door was going to slam and I was going to wake up. I woke up anyway, and realized that the ping pong ball was really my subconscious's symbol for my bladder. (It was nice for my subconscious to finally give me something relatively easy to decode. If anyone can solve the mystery of the giant green-gray, glossy sea creature that looked like a cross between a whale and a dinosaur and was so massive and had such an intense gravitational force that, if it wasn't for the giant sheet of Plexiglas I was watching it through, I would have been sucked into the scary, roiling, dark waters of a harbor that looked kind of like Sydney Harbour but wasn't, I'd be really grateful.) It was when I was returning to bed from the bathroom and saw that it was 4:37 that I realized I had failed in my pledge. Does it help that it was a mere four hours and thirty-seven minutes after the deadline that I at least thought about it? Is there a blog altar that I can perform some kind of penance at?

(Picture: By Charles R. Knight (Making of America) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Why are turkeys called turkeys?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:47:00 +0000

We do some dreadfully unfair things to turkeys at this time of year. Case in point:

(Just spare a thought for a moment for the stylist who worked on this shot. You know it took hours.)

The rest of the year -- when we're not plucking, roasting, devouring, or shoving "beaming orange taper candles" in ceramic simulacra of them -- we make their name an insult. A turkey is a dud, a flop, an embarrassing failure. A turkey is an inept fool.

I don't think Wild Turkeys are dopes. I think they're majestic and gorgeous, strutting and wobbling their wattles and preening feathers that to me look like some kind of lustrous suit of armor.

Wild Turkeys, Arizona (Photo by Frank Gallo)

Wild Turkey, Arizona (Photo by Frank Gallo)

The English language is cumbersome and clotted with history. Pull on any word in any sentence, and the thread will just keep unspooling through your fingertips. Duds and flops are called turkeys because people underestimate turkeys . . . but turkeys were called turkeys in the first place because people in England mistakenly thought they came from Turkey. And it wasn't just that they mistakenly thought they came from Turkey. They mistook them for an entirely different bird. This bird:

Guinea fowl (Photo by Fir002/Flagstaffotos via Wikimedia Commons)

Guinea fowls don't come from Turkey, either. They're from Africa. But they were imported via Turkey, which was good enough, apparently. As to how anybody got a turkey confused with a guinea fowl, I think the only excuse for that would be if the guinea fowl was in a form such as this:

Mmm, delicious-looking guinea fowl. (Photo by By FASTILY via Wikimedia Commons)

The pre-Columbian people of Mexico were the first to domesticate turkeys, and the conquistadors took turkeys back to Spain in the early 16th century. Rumors of their deliciousness spread to other parts of Europe, and then the English got involved and suddenly the birds were called turkeys, even though they were not Turkish or Spanish but Mexican. If the English language was fair and made sense, we would be eating mexicos, not turkeys.

English colonists took turkeys with them and introduced them to North America in the 17th century. Of course, the species was already here, and Native Americans had been eating them for goodness knows how many generations. What this means, though, is that the birds we buy this week at the grocery store are all actually descended from Mexican turkeys. I think my brain is about to explode.

And then after all that, I discovered that we should really be eating eels this Thanksgiving.

The most disturbing shot of a Tufted Titmouse you have ever seen

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 02:16:00 +0000

Thank you, auto-focus, for completely blurring the Black-capped Chickadee I was attempting to photograph. Were you trying to send me a message? Were you trying to warn me of the true demonic intent of the chickadee's Tufted Titmouse ally? The bird looks as though it is planning - and capable of - world domination.

I only noticed this shot when I downloaded pics from my camera today hoping that I would have got a lovely one of the Red-throated Loon I saw at the Connecticut Audubon's Coastal Center at Milford Point this afternoon.

But I had only photos that frustratingly could never quite capture the beauty of the bird or the late afternoon autumn light.

The whole idea was to find a stunning image because today I didn't have much time for writing. I spent most of it down at the Coastal Center learning about the impact of two amazing people, Noble Proctor (astonishing naturalist, professor, author) and Helen Hays (force of nature, chairwoman of the Great Gull Island Project). A celebration was held for them, and it was beautiful to see how they had changed the lives of everyone they have taught and inspired, from ages 17 to 100. One of the things I love about the birding community is the tradition of mentoring and of having respect for those who have so much to teach us about the natural world.

The sun set over the marsh seemed especially vivid in their honor . . .

Things I am grateful for today

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:16:00 +0000

The sun's surprise reminder of warmth on my face when I step into the backyard after lurking in bed sick with a cold
That the starling sitting at the top of the spruce tree soaking up the rays doesn't feel remotely offended that my immediate thought upon resolving its shape into something I recognize is "Oh, just a starling"
The moment when a gull goes overhead and I get a hit of dopamine as my brain toys for a split-second with whether it might, in fact, be a cool raptor
That Mourning Doves look so peaceful and naive when they're plodding around beneath the feeder, but when they think you're not looking, engage in vicious territorial disputes with each other
The fact that the silence and privacy I prize too dearly is broken by my neighbor starting a conversation
The hot drink of lemon juice and water and honey that soothes my jagged throat and makes me think of my dad standing in the kitchen making this
The chicken that is being transformed with red wine into a stew in the crock pot
This cosseted life of hot tea and warm baths and double-paned windows

Some days the only thing that makes sense is nature

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:13:00 +0000

Some days the only thing that truly seems to make sense to me is nature. Some days I wonder how we ended up so far removed from our animal selves. In increments, over many thousands of years, it happened -- until here I am now on the highway, entering my second hour of infuriating, insane-making, stop-start traffic. Roll forward a foot. Stop. Roll forward a foot. Stop. Encased in metal. Powered by an engine I don't understand. Entirely sealed off from the hundreds of people stretching in front and behind me on this jammed roadway as far as I can see, one person per metal capsule. Furious, isolated, trapped, and somehow each finding it one of life's great unfairnesses that we should be the ones to suffer like this.

And here the animal self does bubble up, for a moment at least: the guy behind me who just can't take it any more honks his horn, long and loud and drawn out. And then it bubbles up in me, as I wave my arms and shout back at him in the rear-view mirror. Blood vessels throb in my brain, and I feel as though I could do some damage.

Then the animal self ebbs away again, our reptile brains retreating as the other driver and I shake our heads clear and see the logic of the situation, once again accept this peculiar life that we have created for ourselves. Pavements, and suits with ties, and lipstick, and little rectangular objects we carry with us everywhere to connect ourselves to . . . to . . . what exactly?

A male Northern Cardinal shoots like a scarlet missile across the road, followed quickly by a female, duller but more subtle and just as beautiful. Two Red-tailed Hawks are circling high up in a thermal above the road, elegantly slicing through the air. Inexplicably, something about them up there and me down here makes me feel teary. I put the window down and hear a Goldfinch calling, the sound coming to me in waves as the bird rises and dips in flight: potato chip, potato chip, potato chip.

I have to consciously fight the urge to pull off onto the grassy verge, abandon my metal capsule and walk into the woods. Yes, these woods are degraded and despoiled and weed-entangled, filled with trash and runoff and cigar wrappers and Bud light cans. But deer also graze here. Woodchucks barrel along. Orchids grow. Baby birds call to be fed. Bluejays make sounds like rusty gates swinging in the breeze. Crows skulk. Squirrels pounce. I know I would last nary a night out here with no electricity or grocery stores or the rule of law. But right now, even that seems appealing. Nature is so much less cryptic, so much more honest, in its brutalities.

Backyard bird symphony

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:43:00 +0000

The pulse and flow of birds coming to the feeder are like a symphony. Early on in the day, the House Sparrows emerge from their favorite shrub. One by one, they chime in. They build, and will be there throughout the piece, like the hard-working string section. Titmice swell in numbers. So do the Chickadees, who will be constant, too -- a frantic drumbeat of energy. Even when I'm running around the yard in my pyjamas chasing squirrels up the maple tree, they will doggedly cling to the feeder, dee-dee-deeing and eat-eat-eating. The Bluejays enter, a flash of cornflower blue to liven things up. A Downy Woodpecker hops around the maple, awaiting its cue. The White-breasted Nuthatches are always late. I don't know where they are at sunrise, but it is a couple of hours before their delicate tapping and soft scuttling and meeping join in with the rest of the orchestra. They are punctuated by the occasional Red-breasted Nuthatch for a bit of drama. I look forward to the sweet pause for a goldfinch to land and take a seed; it's like a gentle oboe solo. The Red-bellied Woodpecker is random, like a gong when you least expect it. And when everything falls still and I wonder why the players are taking a break, I look out, and there it is, like the ominous roll of the timpani: a raptor skirting low over the yard. The Cooper's Hawk, looking for an easy snack.

It's okay to play

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:06:00 +0000

Though it may not be apparent from some of the ridiculousness on this blog, I have an unfortunate tendency to over-think things and turn my brain into a mental stew. This happens especially when I am left on my own for extended periods (which happens to be every workday). I wish I could say that I become cerebral in a witty, Woody Allen kind of way, but it's in more of a Malcolm Fraser kind of way. For any readers who aren't Australians born prior to 1980, he was the elected leader of Australia whose super-fun motto was "Life wasn't meant to be easy."* It helped with the whole effect that he looked about as happy and carefree as one of those chiseled statues on Easter Island.

Just try having a fun picnic near this bust of Malcolm Fraser in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens.

A thought hangs over me sometimes when I'm looking at beautiful birds through my binoculars: birds don't get the chance to do frivolous things like this, so why should I? Nature is all about survival. There's no time for leisure. No time for pointless activities.

If you're not building a nest, you're going to extreme lengths to find a mate. If you're not hunkered down over your eggs in a relentless storm, you're fighting off a predator. If you're gorging on food, it's not just because you feel like it but because you have to survive a long migration across the ocean.

So if you're a Hooded Crow in snowy Russia and you find the lid from a jar of mayonnaise at the dump, you . . . use it like a snowboard, of course!

It's so pointless!

So utterly, fabulously, joyously pointless!

There will be enough hard days. There will be plenty of time when all the serious business of life is like a heavy black overcoat. So the next time I find a metaphorical mayonnaise lid, I'm going sledding.

*After retiring from politics, Mal was found wandering, dazed and trouserless, in the lobby of a seedy Memphis hotel favored by hookers, so apparently even he could maintain such dourness for only so long.

Sod off, ya' furry bastard

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Day 1. 9.00 a.m. Frank puts the first bird feeder out on the deck of our new place. "How long will it take before the birds find it?" I excitedly wonder.

9.20 a.m. Titmice and House Sparrows are just about elbowing one another off the feeder. Mourning Doves are sitting below, chowing down. Juncos come. Chickadees. Bluejays. The yard springs to life. Birds are whizzing out of shrubs, taking seeds, returning to their shrubs to devour their tasty morsels, coming back for more. This is awesome.

9.22 a.m. We have just come through a hurricane followed by snowstorm, so I guess it's no wonder that the birds are acting as if they're competing in The Hunger Games. One particularly feisty White-breasted Nuthatch is doing something I've never seen a nuthatch do: every time another nuthatch comes near the feeder, it fans its wings out and hops about doing a long meeeep. To me it sounds like a muppet on Valium, but judging by the effect it's having, this call is clearly very menacing to a rival nuthatch. In contrast to all the avian aggression, when a squirrel appears on the railing of the deck, it looks tremendously relaxed.

9.23 a.m. Squirrels are SO CUTE. It isn't eating any of the bird seed that is being scattered all over the ground. It's sitting there slowly cleaning itself with its paws, just like a cat.

9.24 a.m. Now thoroughly groomed, the squirrel sits back on its haunches, casually takes a sunflower seed, and eats it in a leisurely way. People who hate squirrels and get all antsy about them coming to their bird feeders are so uptight. They're discriminatory species-ists.

10.30 a.m. Time for a cup of tea. I'm so glad Frank put this feeder here near the kitchen window, because now I can watch all these lovely birds. House Sparrows are birds. Wow, that squirrel must have been half starved. The poor thing. It's still in exactly the same place -- slowly, methodically eating.

12.00 p.m. And eating.

1.30 p.m. This squirrel obviously has a glandular problem. It may need to go to the vet.

2.15 p.m. Can squirrels explode?

2.30 p.m. I bring the feeder in for the day, for the animal's own good.

Day 2. 10.00 a.m. What is that sporadic crashing sound? It's like I'm on a ship in a gale and someone forgot to batten a hatch.

10.02 a.m. I think the feeder looks better further away from the house. That way you get a nicer view of the fighty nuthatches . . . and ooh, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, some lovely goldfinches in their subtle winter plumage, and the first House Finch for the yard. Plus, every time the squirrel launched itself from the railing onto the feeder, it nearly crashed through the kitchen window, at risk of injuring itself.

3.30 p.m. Hey, there are three squirrels now.

Day 3. Interesting fact. According to Wikipedia, urban squirrels rarely get to celebrate their first birthday.

Day 4. I return to the breakfast table after going to fill the feeder. "How do you spell 'sod off'?" Frank asks.

"S-O-D . . . O-F-F," I reply.

"It doesn't have a hyphen?" he asks.

"Um, no. Why?"

It's a term you don't hear much around these parts, apparently. A term that, he alleges, I yelled out while filling the bird feeder -- as in, "Sod off, ya' furry bastard!"

I tell him that in the British colonies, "sod off" is a quaint term of endearment.

Day 5. They sense that we have awoken. I tiptoe through the house, but they know we are here. I think they hear when the rhythm of our breathing changes. They watch. They wait. They line up on the fence in anticipation. There is no escape . . .

A birdy poem for a cloudy day

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:15:00 +0000

The simultaneously funny, wise, and poignant Jess at Life With Gusto just solved a mystery for me: what NaBloPoMo means (National Blog Posting Month, where bloggers pledge to make daily posts for the month of November). I could have looked it up before now, but I knew another, more savvy person would get around to it (thanks, Jess!).

I'm 12 days late to the party, but as Einstein said, "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." (The only reason I know that quote is because it's a chapter opener in a book I'm copyediting. Thanks, clever and very personable client!) Jess is holding her own version of NaBLoPoMo, blogging every day until her next baby is born. I don't have that kind of stamina, so I'm going to try NaBloPo2.5 (National Blog Posting Two-and-a-Half Weeks). Today, a birdy poem:

Saline air
Clouds aching to rain
Cormorant and kingfisher together on the dock
A chaos of fish flop in the shallow water
Three mallards shoot by,
wheezing like squeaky bed springs with every wing beat.

The world outside my own head:
it cracks me open and washes me clean.

Life, beauty, love, pain

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:22:00 +0000

Our sweet little cat, Mink, died a few days ago, suddenly, unexpectedly. The emergency vet said it was probably an underlying heart condition. The shock was intense, for her and for us. So much beauty in life and so much pain, all tangled up together.

You may remember Mink as my little friend who helped me make Osprey-themed party decorations. This is the way I like to remember her . . .

She was a keen supporter of all wildlife, not just Osprey. Being an indoor-only girl, she liked to stare fixedly for hours, every muscle tense and coiled for action, at the sparrows nesting in the gutter just on the other side of the window. And she especially loved a good TV nature documentary with wild dogs howling.

Vale, Mink. You were adoring and adorable. There was too much catness in you for just one name, and the most fitting memorial I can think of is to record all the many and varied appellations we called you by, which you answered to depending on mood:

Mink

Minky

Minkalicious

Minklet

Little Minklet

Princess

Baby

Baby-cat

Princess Baby-cat

Little Fatty

Slim

Little Bowling Ball

Furball

Ruby

Slinky

Slinky Slinkster

Spooky

Spooky Spooklet

Best-cat-in-the-world

Little Friend

Minkalated Cat

The Minkster

Minky Cat

Crazy Cat
Sun Bunny
Widget
Little Widget
Little Minky Widget

Yoda

Seal Pup

Owl Face

Ten essentials of the ultimate birthday birding expedition

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 00:49:00 +0000

1. A quest for an uncommon bird. In this case, a Connecticut Warbler. The ornithologist who first recorded the species was no doubt at the end of his rope trying to come up with yet another way to name a yellow warbler and just settled on the place where he saw it. Little did he know that it's barely ever seen in Connecticut. If he'd called it something more apt, like Thicket-skulking Warbler or Honking Great Big Ground-foraging Warbler, I probably wouldn't have been so keen to see it. There was just something about seeing a Connecticut Warbler in Connecticut. On my birthday.

No, I don't have a photo of a Connecticut Warbler -- because you know where this quest is heading, right? Instead, here is a Connecticut Warbler (top), Mourning Warbler, and MacGillivray's Warbler illustrated by Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

2. Bizarre directions. Turn left at the red toy truck. Keep following the river until you find a tree with chicken wire wrapped around the base, lying by the side of the trail. That kind of thing.

3. The right companion to share the expedition with. You need someone who will approach the quest with the requisite gravity.

Frank Gallo, birding companion extraordinaire

4. A sewage treatment plant. They call them water treatment plants now, but we all know what they are. And no birding birthday is complete without one.

5. High-tension power lines. These are a must on any birding expedition, really. The bizarre directions (see point 2) must include a reference to them, e.g., "You want to be on the other side of the power cut." Preferably they will be pulsing and throbbing and crackling in a way that makes you walk really, really quickly through that power cut.

6. A fleeting glance of bird that could be the bird you're looking for. On the way to your ultimate location (e.g., fallen log with chicken wire around base), you should get a very quick sighting of a bird that may fit the description of the rare bird -- or not. For instance, you might notice a gray hood and a yellow body but no other details. It could be a Connecticut Warbler. It could be a Mourning Warbler. It could be a Nashville Warbler. But you will never know, because it has disappeared into an overgrown thicket and will never be seen again by human eyes.

7. Several hours of staring at one spot. The spot should be densely vegetated, almost entirely with weeds. It could also be a slushy bog with an unidentifiable oily slick on top and an abandoned truck tire poking out. There is about a 99% chance that it won't be a picturesque meadow.

(Other) people had actually managed to see a Connecticut Warbler in there in previous days.

8. Cool random stuff that you see while staring at one spot for hours.

A cicada

A weird spiky fruit/gourd thing

A caterpillar

9. A temporary spike in your risk of a major cardiac event when your companion sees something yellow out of the corner of his eye. As your heart rhythm returns to normal, you realize it's only a Palm Warbler. But still, they are cute buggers, aren't they?

10. A sign from the heavens. Sure, you may still have never seen a Connecticut Warbler in Connecticut, but keep your eyes open. You just might see a heart-shaped cloud on the drive home...

Awwwwwww

Life is always worth getting out of the car for

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Driving home just before sunset, I see the sign for Silver Sands. The sensible thing to do would be to ignore it, get home, do all those things I should be doing. The world would go to hell in a handbag if everyone just forgot their list of things they should be doing and took the wrong turn on the way home, right? My hands take over and turn the wheel, and I'm heading down the road that will take me to the boardwalk, to those silvery sands and the gentle sea. Herring Gulls are bobbing on the water at the outlet of a small creek that flows into the sound; they're catching some kind of hapless sea life pouring out with the falling tide, but they're doing it in an uncharacteristically lazy way for gulls. No squawking and squabbling. More in a we've-been-here-for-hours-gorging-ourselves-and-can-barely-poke-another-thing-in kind of way. Night-herons are leaving Charles Island for an evening's fishing -- wok wok, wok wok, they go. I walk along Fort Trumbull beach, and an incredibly friendly cat saunters out and joins me for a walk along the sand. A Glossy Ibis flaps overhead, its profile elegant and ancient and Egyptian against the backdrop of summer houses, the heat haze rising up from grills on people's decks, the pre-dinner drinks being poured. The sun is setting -- how serious are they about closing Silver Sands at sunset, I wonder. Back I go along the boardwalk, and there -- there -- is the reason I took a wrong turn. The clouds, the sunset are incredible. So incredible that strangers stop to take photos, and they forget they are strangers and marvel and wonder together. I say to one woman, "I'm so glad I got out of the car," and she says to me, "Life is always worth getting out of the car for."

Silver Sands, Milford, Connecticut

A lovely place to get lost

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:33:00 +0000

Ever since I can remember, I have needed to sneak away and have time to myself. I was going to say to have time to think, but really, it is time to unthink. I can't even really call it time for myself; it's more like time to escape myself. Somehow when I am immersed in nature, my mind is buzzing and alive, yet crystalline and still. It is the ultimate way to be alone but not lonely: there are the rocks and tree roots, the branches creaking in the wind, a flock of White-throated Sparrows hopping through the undergrowth, a Tufted Titmouse who alights on a branch and fixes you with an inquisitive look.

Tufted Titmouse, Pond View Preserve, Easton

I felt the call this afternoon, and I needed to go somewhere gentle, somewhere soul soothing. I remembered a map that I had printed of a place that sounded like something out of a fairy tale, with trails that lace around a chain of ponds -- Boulder Island Pond, Deer Trace Pond, Cattail Pond, Sunken Pool, Shadow Pond, Heron Pond, Fawn Pond -- until you reach Moss Hollow. The names evoked such beautiful scenes that reading the map was almost as good as reading a story. And it really was beautiful when I got there.

I took the map but soon got lost. I can get lost driving to do the grocery shopping, so that's nothing new. But this time, I think some part of me took over and got me lost on purpose. When I started out, I was ticking off the ponds -- I saw the boulder, I imagined the deer drinking at the water's edge, watched the cattails waving in the wind. And then without realizing, I had put the map in my pocket and was following the calls of birds instead. I was wending and weaving through corridors of trees, circling my way around ponds glittering in the sunlight. Time became irrelevant.

It was a revelation to discover that this place I had never thought to go birding in before -- Pond View Preserve, in Easton -- is a wonderland of birds. A Merlin shot overhead at an awe-inspiring speed, like a stealth bomber. Two Red-shouldered Hawks wheeled up high, screaming. Barn Swallows swooped above the treetops, chittering away. The warblers were back: Palm Warblers, Black-and-White Warblers, Yellow-rumps. There was the occasional flash of a Goldfinch. American Crows were lurking. A gang of Red-bellied Woodpeckers had colonized the whole place. There were flocks of Chipping Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows. The Robins were laughing; and the Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and White-breasted Nuthatches were calling. A flash of a bright scarlet male Northern Cardinal flying across my path was followed by the muted tones of a female. There was the grumpy gee-gee sound of the Ruby-crowed Kinglet. And finally, my last bird before I managed to unlose myself and find the parking lot, the bird that made me smile the most: my first Catbird of the season, giving its gravelly mewing call from a tangled thicket. Welcome back, friend!

Red-bellied Woodpecker, Pond View Preserve

The buds of Spring, Pond View Preserve

Day-moon over Pond View Preserve

Pond View Preserve is part of the 127.8-acre Paine Open Space, and you can get to it from Maple Street, Easton. If you can't make it there for a visit, reading the map and drifting away to Moss Hollow in your mind is pretty good for the soul, too.

Dark dreams of birds in the half-light

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

I haven't been out with my binoculars very much lately, so the birds are coming to me in my dreams.They are trying to bring me a message, if only I could understand their language. My mind and my emotions have had an upheaval of late, and the way ahead seems murky. I could do with their guidance. Last night, I was walking in the gloaming, the world around me only dimly visible. Two slender white birds with glossy black legs flew into a tree. Snowy Egrets, I said to the man walking beside me. No, they're Night-herons, he replied. I could still see them, incandescent white in the darkness, yet as soon as he doubted, I began to question what I was seeing. Their whiteness no longer looked so white, their forms became less distinguishable. We walked on, and in the twisted branches above me, suddenly a bird would appear -- but each time, when I looked closer, I would realize it was only the craggy bark playing tricks with my eyes in the half-light. An owl, that branch looks just like an owl, I said -- no, wait, a hawk. A Red-tailed Hawk, the man said, and at that, the bark became flesh and feather. And then the bird grew larger, its feathers darker. It began to call, but in a way no Red-tail has ever called before -- a loud, insistent alarm, a scream that seemed to carry with it all the angers of hell.

Red-tailed Hawk (Reports of Explorations and Surveys of the U. S. Pacific railroad, Volume X, 1859. Public domain.)

How to make Osprey-themed party decorations with your cat

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Next Saturday is the Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford Point's fundraising party to welcome back the Osprey who have returned this spring, as they have for many years, to nest at the marsh. The webcam shows they laid their second egg this week.

So I'm making tissue-paper pom-poms for the party. I am not crafty. I can knit a scarf, in a pretty remedial fashion, and that's all. But there is nothing that can't be learned on YouTube from actual crafty people. I went on there and learned how to make big tissue-paper pom-poms, and I'm planning on doing them in a chocolate-and-white theme to match the color of the Osprey. I settled down to the job this afternoon with Mink, my Burmese cat. I suggest that everyone who is thinking of making Osprey-themed party decorations do so with their cat. It doesn't have to be a Burmese cat, but it helps.

Step 1. Make sure your cat is lying in the sun, because why will she interfere with you when she could just lie in the sun?

Step 2. Lay out 10 sheets of tissue paper.

Step 3. Get the cat off the stack of tissue paper. Have fun with that.

Step 4. Make 1-inch concertina-style folds in the paper.

Your cat will be utterly uninterested in this, as it is the boring "work" part of the task.

Step 5. Tie florist wire around the middle of the concertinaed tissue paper.

Step 6. Be sure to get the florist wire away from the cat before she tries to eat it. A trip to Party City for chocolate-brown cocktail napkins on a Sunday morning is quite fun. A trip to that emergency vet clinic in New Haven where no matter what has happened to your pet, the bill always seems to be around $1800 is not.

Step 7. Cut the ends of the paper in whatever shape you like. I went for a sharp point so that the end result is a bit like a chrysanthemum. This will be too, too tedious for the cat, as what trouble can she get into with a few scraps of tissue paper? Pfft.

Spiky end that I cut into my pom pom.

Step 8. Very carefully tease apart each layer of tissue paper. Tissue paper rips, people. I speak from hard-won
personal experience.

Your cat will really, really want to help with this bit.

Step 9. Sit back and admire the results of your labor. Have a cup of tea, or some kibble.

Connecticut folks, tickets are still available for the Return of the Osprey party, on Saturday, April 21 at 5:30 p.m. Just call Louise Crocco at 203-878-7440 or email her at lcrocco@ctaudubon.org. Not only will there be feasting and the drinking of fine wines, and the holding of silent auctions, there will Osprey-themed pom poms. I may even have gone on YouTube by then to work out a fancy way to fold napkins!

A dream of goldfinches

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:02:00 +0000

American Goldfinch, author unknown 1904
(Wikimedia Commons)

Some days the beauty of the natural world comes on almost like an ache. It is there right in front of me, but too intense, too big to put into words, to capture in a photograph or even to comprehend. The spring weather carries with it the energy of winter still. The air is crisp and cold like a crunchy apple. I want to grab hold of it, freeze the atmosphere like this forever. The branches are bare except for a few buds; the harbor's water glows in the early-morning light. A Red-bellied Woodpecker trills. Titmice call, but I can't see them popping around way up high. Goldfinches whiz and zing and whir. It triggers a memory that tries to run away from me, but I catch it and hold its tail for just a second before it slips from my grasp: a dream I had last night, a dream of goldfinches. There were thousands of them, brilliant yellow and black, flying through a forest. There was someone else in the dream, someone I was talking to about these birds, but I can't remember now. All that remains is the image of the birds flying fast, urgently, silently, between the trunks of great tall trees.

The strangest scam in Bangkok?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:38:00 +0000

I have an hour to myself on our last night in Bangkok. We have been in far northern Thailand, where there is nothing but tree-covered mountains stretching as far as the eye can see, and silence broken only by the calls of birds. Now there is everything, everywhere, all at once: Bleary-eyed tourists in bars. Massage parlors and "massage" parlors. Ganesha shrines laden with flowers and bananas and packets of barbecue-squid-flavored potato chips. Stray dogs looking up at me with those liquid, pleading eyes. Plants taking root in every crack in the concrete. Skinny cats scurrying over rooftops. Squirrels climbing palm trees. Every molecule of air carries that smell that hits you the instant you get out of an airport in Southeast Asia -- tropical fruit and diesel fumes, sewers and jasmine, open drains and chilli-infused smoke from the woks of street vendors.

Namtok Mae Surin National Park, Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand

Asok district, Bangkok (thank you, Frank Gallo, for the pic)

I find a nice-looking bar down the lane way from our hotel, with an empty table on the sidewalk. Great, I'll just sit here quietly. The condensation is beading nicely on the outside of my glass of white wine, and nobody has noticed me sitting here observing them -- surely this the very best state of being. And then I feel the eyes on me. A woman kneeling at my feet, on the street. From the instant I see the look in her eyes, I can tell that whatever this is about, it isn't going to be good. She thrusts a tiny bamboo cage into my hands. As if there wasn't already enough life crammed into this Bangkok lane way, here in the cage are about twenty sparrow-sized birds. I can feel their warmth through the bars of the cage; sense their panic as they try to flap their wings and find they can't; hear them cheeping, cheeping, cheeping. All these eyes -- too many black, adrenalized eyes -- are staring at me, pleading with me to DO something.

It is really a pity I didn't have a camera.
Or perhaps the pity is that I took Art all the way to the
end of high school but apparently didn't absorb a great deal.

The woman looks like she has had a hard day on the road getting here from one of those hot, flat rural areas outside the city, where the air is like soup and the sky is always burning white -- except at sunset, when the smog makes for the most epic sunsets imaginable. She looks at me with the same pleading eyes. "Good luck," she says, miming opening the cage door to set the birds free. If I pay her 400 baht, she explains, I can set them free, and this will bring me good luck. She shows me four of these tiny cages packed tight with wild birds. I feel seasick all of a sudden. Everything around me is too loud and bright and weird -- the people drinking and laughing in the bars and restaurants, the beautiful girls out the front of the massage parlor waiting for customers, the fluorescent lights of the 7-11. My brain can't even register what the birds are -- it was only later in the air-conditioned calm of our hotel room, looking at a field guide, that I worked out they were Streaked Weavers.

Streaked Weaver (By J.M.Garg, via Wikimedia Commons)

Central Thailand

Four hundred baht? More than ten dollars? I can't pay fifty-odd dollars to free all these birds. And thanks to the undisguised horror on my face, she knows I'm not stopping at just one cage. "One hundred baht for each," I say. I'm bargaining as if I were buying a fake Tiffany necklace at a street market (hey, my starfish pendant looks almost real, okay?). We go back and forth over the price. A whole lot of things occur to me at once:
1. I really just want to drink my lovely chilled white wine.
2. I feel guilty because this woman is dusty and tired in a way I'll probably never be, and here I am just really wanting to drink my lovely chilled white wine.
3. There is no way I'm going to be enjoying another drop of this lovely chilled white wine.
4. The streets of Bangkok are possibly not the best place to release a flock of Streaked Weavers.
5. It's really bad that I'm about to financially reward her for capturing wild birds, pretty much ensuring that she'll do the same thing again tomorrow.
6. And why on God's earth does the Lonely Planet warn you about dodgy tour operators at the Grand Palace but not about sad-looking women persuading you to give them money for birds crammed so tightly into cages that you fear if you don't give her the money, a goodly proportion of them will probably be dead soon?

I hand over the money, and in an instant there are Streaked Weavers everywhere -- in potted plants, on chairs, on power lines -- calling their little heads off. Some sit panting on the sidewalk for a few moments before shooting off to join the others. They quickly form a flock and hightail it out of there. No one else seems to have even noticed any of this going on. I feel totally conflicted about the whole thing -- but at least all those eyes aren't beseeching me anymore. Maybe I can choke down the last of my wine after all.

And that, my friends, is when I see what I can't believe I didn't see all along. There on the road just behind her, a big box. The woman is all smiles now as she unwraps a cloth from around it, and there it is: The mothership. More eyes than I can count. A noisy, feathery, jam-packed Streaked Weaver condo.

I've seen a Snowy Owl!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:06:00 +0000

The call goes out: a Snowy Owl at Stratford Point. Not much more than a 20-minute drive away. Grab binoculars, camera, car keys, jump in car. Frank Gallo gives me directions to this place I've been a million times before but of course can't remember how to get to. He's giving exceptionally good directions, but to me it sounds like: words, words, diner, turn left, words, words, airport, other words, more words -- what is wrong with me? Anyone who gives me directions may as well be talking in Abyssinian. I know that even once I've plugged the street address into the GPS, I will still get lost. Now why is everyone suddenly obeying the speed limit? It's un-American. Why won't that giant SUV get out of the overtaking lane? What the hell is that guy in the giant Cadillac tank-boat-thing with Tennessee license plates actually doing? Certainly not driving. I take a wrong turn. Yes, even with the GPS. Somehow I get there. Step out of car. Cell phone falls out of pocket onto pavement, falls into more pieces than I realized a cell phone consisted of. The bird is astonishing. It's just sitting there, 20 yards away from a knot of birders, napping, occasionally opening its eyes and swiveling its head, absorbing the warmth of the rocks. I get that dissociated feeling you get when you're in the middle of an accident that's unspooling right before your eyes: It's happening, yes, it's happening, but somehow it's not happening; you're registering it all from a distance. All this time -- more than three decades -- and here I am, face to face with this creature. It's head is so rounded, so boofy -- somehow I only fully notice this now, being able to watch it turn that head. And there are barely perceptible ear tufts, fluffing up now and then in the wind, which always blows cold and hard out at Stratford Point. Thank you, Scott Kruitbosch, for finding this beauty today, and Frank Mantlik, for setting up his scope so I could get a good look!

Protesters occupy Foley Square! I still haven't seen a Snowy Owl!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:18:00 +0000

So I was umming and ahhing over whether to go into the city and see the OWS Day of Action today. How weird it would be, I thought, to see subway stations occupied by the masses. (Oh hang on, what's weird about that?) Anyway, my urge to see my first Snowy Owl was more pressing, so I went to East Haven.

(You know, I probably should use that photo-straightening tool in Windows Photo Gallery, but somehow it always seems like cheating to do that.)

Wow, that is a welcoming little place just off Cosey Beach Avenue, in East Haven. Why did I always used to think of "cozy" when I saw that street name? There were "No Parking" and "Private Property" and "No Trespassing" signs everywhere. Um, yeah, okay.

This is the inviting rock where the Snowy Owl was -- yesterday, for hours, when I wasn't:

Whoa, check out that horizon! Was I drunk? No. East Haven most certainly has some kind of strange electromagnetic ley line vortex effect going on.

No Snowy Owl today. The quest continues. And I can't complain, really. It is so quiet down there at this time of year, so unpeopled, that the gulls and Brant and Sanderlings are in a world of their own -- a busy, methodical world of turning shells over and winkling around with their bills to find food. The only sound was the tinkling of shells along the foreshore.

Attack of the 50-foot gull

I have been delightedly looking at Keith Mueller's pictures of the Snowy Owl, which he took yesterday. Now I want to see one myself even more. That a killing machine so powerful it can take down a great big eider duck looks so freaking cute when it yawns is just amazing.

Occupy Wall Street, or look for a Snowy Owl?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Mickan) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:49:00 +0000

There are two birds that I have wanted to see since I was small child: the Wandering Albatross and the Snowy Owl. Both thanks to my mother. The Wandering Albatross became a fixation after she took me to see a live production of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" one night in our town's only big cathedral. I still remember the lead striding down the aisle between the pews -- "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" -- albatross (well, probably a Silver Gull, truth be told) around his neck. I finally saw Wandering Albatrosses this year, on a SOSSA pelagic trip out of Wollongong, in eastern Australia, in August. Even whilst heaving over the side of the boat (turns out I have no sea legs), I was still in awe as the albatrosses sailed by like small, silent planes.

The Snowy Owl, though, huh. Almost every year one turns up in coastal Connecticut for a day or so, and it always seems to be when I am stuck at my desk. The Snowy Owl thing happened thanks to my mother attending art college, painting a giant canvas inspired by a picture from National Geographic of four Snowy Owl chicks hunkered down on a desolate tundra. The idea of tundra, permanently frozen ground, was so appealing to a humidity-hating child stuck in subtropical Australia. Those chicks had gimlet eyes, and they looked somehow superior, as if they knew something the rest of us didn't; I loved that. The picture is still on my parents' wall, those chicks glaring at everyone.

So today I'm torn: Go to NYC to the Occupy Wall Street protests on the 2-month anniversary and soak up history and take photos and you know, BE there, or try and see the Snowy Owl that was hanging out at East Haven yesterday. It's OWS vs. OWL. The inner dialogue is going something like "I'm kind of tired, do I really want to go all the way to the city and tromp around and blah blah..." Then "I might get arrested; I don't want to get arrested" Where did that come from? I'm not really at all scared of being arrested. And "What if it turns violent?" Pfft. Let's face it, I'm just coming up with rational excuses. Neuroscientists have pinpointed the moment that the brain makes a decision, before we even know about it. Then it tells us about it and kindly lets us think that we've made a conscious choice. My brain has already decided that OWL beats OWS, so off I go to try and find that bird...