Bird Walk

A couple of days ago at the Ponds. I assume this was a class on a Bird Walk. Binoculars, note-pads, and even a bird-identifying card. I thought it was a nice scene, and especially liked the girl in blue pointing at something she had just discovered. I'm so glad to see kids being exposed to Mother Nature!

 

Egret Feather

I found this feather the other day, under one of the Great Egret trees in Santa Rosa. A beautiful gift from the birds.

 

Please forgive me if some of my information does not stand up to close scrutiny! I tried to get it right!

 

This feather is called a plume. And it was the beautiful bird's plumage that made it far too popular in 19th-century North America, resulting in the egrets being decimated by plume hunters who supplied purveyors of the latest ladies' fashions. Today the great egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society and represents a conservation success story.

 

The name Egret stems from the French word Aigrette which means plume.

 

You may now admire the picture!

 

Another wonderful adventure. Acting on directions from wonderful photographer Philip Green, Bob H and I expeditioned (?) out to the 'West 9th Street Rookery' in Santa Rosa. There, on a residential street, and next to a school, are two Eucalyptus and one Pine trees, serving as the home of dozens of Black-crowned Night-Herons and Great Egrets. A most unlikely place for a rookery! I sat on my folding chair, watching the birds, and taking pictures as they were hauling in twigs and branches, building nests in the trees for their soon-to-arrive offspring. They paid no attention to the incessant yelping of a neighborhood dog. Soon there should be more activity in those trees, with more arrivals plus newborns.

 

I could not help but be awed, once again, by the activity of birds. Just think how they know the time if rife to start building a nest, then flying out to pick the right twig, picking it up in their bill, flying with it to the nest, and placing it in just the right and secure spot. That's no mean undertaking!

 

Shollenberger Park

Heading back after a birding trip to Santa Rosa (pix soon), Bob H and I visited Shollenberger Park in Petaluma. We were greeted, on the shore, by three rather friendly birds. Bob called them ducks, and I corrected him in a very authoritative voice, that they were geese. The fact of the matter is that I didn't have a clue. I just 'thought' they were geese. They seemed almost tame and perhaps even looking for a hand-out. After parading in front of us, they casually waddled into the water. No sooner did I arrive at home than I consulted my guide-books and - you guessed it - came up with zilch! My guess is that the black birds were males, the light-colored one a female. Be sure to admire their curled tails. I swear they were not rubber-duckies!

 

The Accidental Photographer

Some of you, blessed with elephantine memories, may recall a picture I sent out four days ago, which I called 'Bush-in-the-Pond'. Inadvertently and miraculously it reversed itself (this is the truth) into a negative image. I have no idea how it happened, but today, in Point Reyes Station, a lovely lady from Auburn, handed me a copy of THE WATCHTOWER. Is there a connection? Let me cut to the chase ~ I like the picture so much that I elevated it to today's Daily E-mail.

 

Common Merganser

Common Mergansers are rare visitors to the Ponds. I photographed this one yesterday, out there, all by its lonesome. It is a female. Males have a black back and head. In my experience, Mergansers are one of the few species of ducks where the female is more colorful that its male counterpart (fortunately this also holds true for our own species). I am very fond of these beautiful birds.

 

Orchid

Bowing to the hundreds of entreaties from my minions, I present another picture from the orchid show. There are people who go bananas over orchids, and I can sort of understand the way they feel.

 

I saw it with my own eyes

I saw it with my own eyes.The waning moon rolling down the slope of Mount Tam. I swear that I was stone cold sober. Fortunately I had my trusty D50 along to record the unusual happening, or nobody would believe me. Too bad it wasn't my D90, or I could have filmed (??) the event.

 

The Selection Process

There's a German saying ~ "wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual" ~ "whoever has the choice has the torture". Sometimes selecting a picture for my Daily E-mail is almost more than I can handle. Should it be another shot from my recently added Orchids file, the one of the Three Dancing Bears, the Cumulous Clouds, or perhaps the close-up of the Sarah Palin look-alike Stripper? I finally picked the Bush-in-the-Pond photo, which I took this morning. I guess its back to my Japanese "Say it with just a few, simple, Strokes" Period.

 

Change of Pace

Actually this picture is still related to the Orchid Show. I believe, that what you see is called a dock cleat (to which you tie a ship). I spent half an hour googling around for a name and this is the best I could come up with ("ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put" ~ Winston Churchill). The glasses are from my vast collection of memorabilia, a.k.a. junk. The chain is anybody's guess and the rest is pure fantasy. Oh, and before I forget, we spied the cleat on the dock as we exited the Orchid Show. Does all this make sense or does it seem to come from a rattled mind?