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Green herons
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. I’ve reduced my screen time quite a bit this summer and experienced corresponding benefits. But I’ve continued to observe and enjoy some favorite haunts during this all-too-brief (here in the Northeast) warm season.
One bird I started really noticing last summer is the green heron, and I’ve had some good opportunities to photograph some this year. At one pond here locally, there must have been a successful nesting pair, because young herons have been marauding together, discussing everything and everyone. In the process they’ve posed nicely for some pictures.
This bird took a break from looking lordly atop its snag, and scratched an itch. You can see its nictitating membrane in this pic.
Then it flew away. It looks awkward in flight, maybe because its tail is so short.
Another bird that posed for photos was this next green heron, which the girls and I watched through the windows at Sapsucker Woods. It seems almost too easy, this kind of nature study. In this setting, the bird’s small size next to the crowd of talkative ducks was striking. It was hunting with great concentration.
Like any good fisherman, it posed for a moment with its catch. Then it turned the minnow neatly and swallowed it, head first. It was interesting to me to see the disturbance in the water’s surface increasing as the heron waited and then snatched. I’m not sure if the minnows were reacting to the heron, or if the heron was merely watching the minnow activity as the group approached it under the water.
So much of “nature study” involves watching animals simply eating or taking care of young. They are just surviving, doing the same ordinary things we humans do. But they have the intrigue of being different species, highly skilled and adapted.
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Sapsucker Woods Walk
I saw only one other person on the trails at Sapsucker Woods on Wednesday, and I saw more birds than I photographed. It was brutally hot, but I was in town and couldn’t resist a quick walk.
This fellow was fishing — and scratching an itch.
Immediately across the small bay was an unexpected sight — a deer cooling herself in the water, the first of two I saw.
There were bees busy in the wildflowers.
Quite a number of these pretty flowers poked through the rails of the first boardwalk. I believe it’s called pasture rose.
As usual, there were many chipmunks to be seen. This one was climbing rather than scurrying across the trail, squeaking.
I haven’t been out and about much this week due to a bout with what I believe was tularemia, a disease transmitted through a deer fly bite. It was an unpleasant experience involving a bull’s-eye like irritation around the bite, a high fever, and achiness. Thankfully antibiotics did the trick.
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Cliff Swallows
These birds are described as “gregarious.” We watched them for ten minutes or so this morning and they were busy catching insects and taking them back to their young in the mud nest.
I love their white eyebrows and curious faces. All the while they worked, they made a cheerful sounding chittering noise.
There are three nests along the bridge, the middle one appearing to be a swallow duplex.
I’m enjoying learning about these new-to-me birds.
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Summer sightings
Today on the way out of a park, Younger Daughter and I stopped to scrape a dead oriole off the road and place it in a shady bed of clover off to the side. It was our small acknowledgment of beauty utterly wasted.
But as Ma in the Little House books is fond of saying, there’s no loss without some small gain. Glancing up as we walked back to the car, we spotted some cliff swallow nests on the bridge over the river.
There were several of them along the bridge’s eaves. We’ll have fun watching their story unfold.
Younger Daughter loves streams, and while she played in the water I puttered on the edge with my camera.
A meadow fritillary, I think — about 2 inches across with wings open. 
One of several watchful song sparrows. 
I believe this is mayweed, based on the leaves thin “yarrow-like” leaves. All in all a very nice time together. Younger Daughter caught minnows and threw rocks for the dog while I wandered and sweated. I’m not at my best when it’s in the nineties out, but I felt rewarded by these beauties.
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Contradictions
I realize it’s lame to take pictures at the zoo. It’s not exactly “wildlife photography.” It’s “captive creature photography.”
But still, it’s a way of taking the experience home with you. Last week, we went with some home schooling friends to the Syracuse Zoo. It’s a great zoo, full of happy and healthy animals. Some were playing “King of the Pool” on a hot day.
And even the inevitable sleepers looked contented.
Most of the penguins were shooting nimbly around in the water.
But this one taught me that even in the sociable penguin community, there are introverts.
Naturally, we visited the aviary twice. Not only are we bird people in general, but the exotic bird room provides a less bounded experience of the wild than the rest of the zoo. We walked through the tropical habitat and enjoyed the whoosh of wings over our heads and the sight of avian wonders unfamiliar to us, close enough to touch.
Some of them found us pretty amusing.
Roseate Spoonbill 
White-crested Laughing Thrush Others seemed like super-vivid dream versions of local birds. This Troupial reminded us of a Baltimore oriole, but bigger and brighter.
Troupial And this Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove faintly suggested a rose-breasted grosbeak on steroids.
Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove There were lots of gorgeous birds, but Simon the macaw’s personality stood out. At first, he seemed to like us.
“Hey baby! Come here often?” But suddenly…
“What are YOU staring at???” On the way home, in a congested section of highway, a pigeon was wandering, disoriented, in the shoulder. It was toddling in the wrong direction, out into traffic. It may have been hit, and dazed. I swerved a little to avoid hitting it, but the last I saw of it in my rearview mirror, it was in direct line with the front tire of the car behind me. I looked away, wincing.
It’s happened several times lately. I’ve seen animals in desperate straits on roadways, and I’ve been unable to do anything about it. What would I do if I could? I’m not sure. At the least, I’d move them out of harm’s way, or try to get them to help. But on a highway with both lanes full, there is no stopping.
I was struck — am struck — by the contrast between the carefully kept and fenced-in beauties we had seen at the zoo, and the common pigeon mowed down on the roadway on the way home. There is a degree of unavoidable brutality built into our systems at times.
I imagine a world in which birds on the road and birds in the zoo — and all the other living things, human and nonhuman alike, that surround me — could be taken into account and respected. Yet I’m sure that the contradictions of the present system run all through me, in ways I’m aware of and ways that are hidden to me.
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June 23, 2012 Morning Sights
Red eft 
Black-eyed Susan 
Fern fairyland 
Chestnut-sided warbler 
Female yellow warbler? 
Robin, nesting quietly 
Robin fledgling in the same bush 
Yellow warbler 
Tree tunnel Also seen: Eastern towhee, Baltimore oriole, house wrens, blue jays, oven birds, deer, chipmunks, common yellowthroats, rabbits, woodchucks, toads, pearl crescent and least skipper butterflies.
Heard: Deer, woodthrushes
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June 21, 2012 — Walk
Least skipper moth 
Green frog 
Nosy woodchucks 
Damselfly (bluet?) laying eggs 
Baby pine forest 
Why couldn’t I get the focus right on this little showman? 
Lady Catbird 
Plumpkin Specklebreast — a juvie robin 
Daisy among the chokecherries -
Question mark butterfly
The two little white markings on the dead-leaf-like underside of the wing are what give this butterfly its name. It’s quite beautiful with its wings spread.
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Songbird Scepter
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Impromptu Lesson
My daughter and I went to a popular walking trail last night, looking for warblers. We saw a few interesting birds, and on the way in we also saw this painted turtle out in the open.
There are wetlands all around the trail, so we didn’t think much of it. We figured it was crossing the trail to find a spot lay eggs. But on the way back, a couple were seated on the grass beside the turtle, and they told us that she was laying eggs.
Indeed she was — or rather, preparing to. It was a neat experience to watch her laboriously digging the hole with her hind legs.
We’ve read that turtles lay eggs, but it was a very different experience to watch her in action for awhile. She would scrape deeply with one leg, shift, scrape deeply with the other, and then moisten the cavity periodically with her own fluids. She was intent on her work and completely undaunted by the four spectators she had accumulated.
We observed her for 10 minutes or so, then went on our way. This morning, I went running down at the same trail, and when I checked the spot it looked like this.
Why did she choose that spot — in mown grass along a paved trail, in not-particularly-moist ground? Presumably the eggs are below-ground, 5-10 cm according to what I read this morning. Sometimes painted turtles dig “false nests” before settling on the site where they actually lay their eggs, but without digging in myself I’ll never know. She certainly had done some serious excavation and turned up all those small stones.
Apparently the eggs will hatch in August or September, and the baby turtles may not come out, but may arrange themselves symmetrically in the nest and winter there. We won’t expect any juvenile turtle sightings anytime soon! But what good moment to have passed by.
