Birdnoise (mostly)

Brooklyn, NY - kc - Monday, August 29th, 2005 : goo

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Hey, this is going to be one of those periodic eruptions of summernoise! Like for example those beautiful Seals. I've been lucky enough to be out of town, first in Pennsylvania, for a friend's birthday party. While the rest of the crowd went off to the petting zoo, I looked at the butterflies....

and the clouds over the porch...

and the hummingbird...

The next day it was off to Orient, Long Island. Where the weather was glorious. I have no photos of rabbits on lawns, raccoon clans with their eyes glittering in the headlights, or young ospreys practicing landings on their nest platforms...but I did manage to capture this dead bird, which--actually my beloved aging mutt found it on her slow walk along the shore, and it was as if she nosed it and called me, and I came over and discovered it had a band! So I called the number, 1-800-something-BAND, and they've promised me a Certificate of Appreciation (I must capitalize that) and a brief history of the bird, which I'm certain is a tern--Common? Young? In winter plumage? I know not. All I know is it seemed freshly dead, untouched, and looked so beautiful in the towel...I left it in the marsh by a piece of driftwood and it was gone the next day...

Okay, and then there were the swallows. There's an old cartoon, undoubtedly the New Yorker, which portrayed the swallows on a line as musical notes...but I've read those stories about how the skies were once black with migrating birds, and that just doesn't seem to happen any more. But the profusion of swallows! A rhapsody of swallows! I hadn't seen this many since I was a kid, when I would ride up to the Durland farm on my bike and sit with Mrs. Durland on the porch in the evening and watch the swallows swirling in the fading light and practice spelling "Schenectady." And so it goes...

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jeeff: hey, i really enjoyed this.

kc: kind of a city unto themselves. & thanks!

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