Splash zone

 These are not-so-good to lousy photos, but the birds were having so much fun! So was I, watching them.

Young robin in his private pool.

Well, maybe not so private.

"Let me show you how it's done."

How do they do that, anyhow, without their heads unscrewing themselves?

The starling, left alone, works on his technique.

Yes! So cooling! 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Unas fotos no tan buenas, pero los pajaritos se divertían mucho. Yo también, viéndlos.

1. Un petirrojo en su alberca privada.
2. O no tan privada. Tiene visita.
3. —Permíteme enseñarte como se hace. — (¿Cómo es que no se les desatornillen las cabezas?)
4. El estornino, ya a solas, ensaya su técnica de salpicadura.
5. ¡Tan refrescante!

Party in the plum tree

It snowed overnight and all morning, as promised. Around noon, I replenished the plum tree's stock of bird treats, and went back inside to take photos through the window. The birds got there even before I did.

Party time!

Starlings, towhees, a sparrow, and a junco.

The rest of the juncos were on the ground below, picking up the suet crumbs that the starlings kept dropping. A chickadee dropped by, grabbed a sunflower seed, and flew away to hammer at it in peace before I got the camera focused.

The brown "box" behind the tree is the neighbour's chimney; against it, the steadily falling snow is visible.

And then, I took the camera to the park and a wetland while the snow was still coming down. Photos anon.

Gotta wait out 2012 to the last gasp

2013, finally. Except in Hawaii; they've got another 18 minutes left in 2012, as of now**.

The year went out quietly for us. Laurie and I sat and listened to a CD of the Mikado, then I treated myself with a pot of ginger tea, and checked in with my kids on Facebook. All very peaceful.

But 2013; what will it bring? It's a year of 13s; 50 Fridays teamed up with the number, another two doubled: Friday the 13th, 2013, in September and December. Will someone decide that's a good excuse to foretell yet another end of the world?*** There are two good dates there! And when was that 2013 comet arriving?

Well, if you believe in bad luck omens, there are also the good ones. I've got mine; today, in a first for the year, in a short burst of 5 minutes, four starlings, one flicker, and a varied thrush all dropped in to visit. I think that's the first flicker or starling I've seen around here since a year ago. And all at once! It must mean something, surely!*

Here's proof, at least of the first two, photos taken without leaving my desk, which would have chased the flicker far away.

Flicker waiting for a starling to get off the suet feeder.

Still waiting. He eventually gave up; the starlings were not sharing.

Starling and suet feeder. The other three were on the ground underneath, collecting the falling crumbs, and keeping the juncos at bay.

The varied thrush ran past twice, pausing just long enough to be identified. The place was too crowded for him.

*I think it really meant that they were hungry. But sometimes I'd rather be silly than sensible.

**Just checked the time again. It is now officially 14 minutes into 2013 in Hawaii. And that's the very last gasp of 2012.

***Not that I'd worry. I've survived a fair number of world ends already.

Mud Bay, in normal BC weather

It had rained hard all the way to Mud Bay Park, but when we got to the parking lot, it had slacked off to a gentle drizzle. We bundled up; I dug an emergency plastic cape out of my bag. (One of those $1 things; awkward and fragile, but it did keep the wind and rain off.) Laurie decided his jacket was waterproof enough; he didn't want to be hampered by flapping plastic. At least he took the big umbrella to keep his camera dry. (Dryish, anyhow; I carried a soft rag and dried it off for him a couple of times.) I had the small umbrella, since I was swathed in plastic.

Umbrellas are stubborn, persnickety things, especially if you need them. How do you hold a camera, manipulate its controls through plastic, and hold a bucking umbrella at the same time? I shoved the handle down my back, inside the jacket. Didn't work; dumped water on my nose. I need three hands.

We walked past the fields to the dike, then along the top of the dike to the other side of the railroad bridge, where the sandpipers hang out. It was wet going; the rain had intensified again.

Mud Bay as Laurie saw it.

Laurie, as I saw him.

Mud Bay, with heron. The mist hides the hills on the far side.

The view was amazing, with a magic I'd never seen here before. The water seemed to go on forever, until it blended into the grey sky; distant trees and hills were mere ghosts in the mist. Everything looked soft, even the dead weeds and the jagged rocks.

Farmlands and the hills of North Delta behind them.

A heron, shaking the water off his wings.

The second heron, posed on a mud spit.

When we got too close, he moved to the railroad bridge.

Wet tracks. The train crosses to Crescent Beach here, on its way down to the US.

We were fascinated by the weeds; with summer past, the colours are dying. Browns predominate. The rain highlighted their architecture, something we usually pass over without seeing.

Tansy, with brown flower heads.

Unidentified weed.

Bejewelled stems.

Hurrying now because someone had turned on the taps overhead full strength, we headed down the trail towards the parking lot. But we stopped to look at the scat, and I scanned the field for birds; we often see hawks here, on both sides of the path. But now, nothing moved. We went on.

Hunting ground. Plenty of small birds and rodents, and a few scrumptious rabbits.

A bit of that hunting ground, up close. It's holding hundreds of water droplets.

Lupins, still green.

Goldenrod in a sheltered spot. Still yellow, but bowed down by the weight of water.

Tansy buttons.

On the way home, with the heater blasting out warm air, and Laurie complaining about wet pants, we passed a flock of starlings, several hundreds strong, blowing from tree to wires to field to fence and back again. Laurie stuck the camera out the window and took photos; photos of starlings through raindrops on the lens.

I got this one through the windshield.

This was fun! Gotta do it again some time. With proper rain gear, maybe.

A Skywatch post.
..

Blue sky search

This time of year, fog often settles in over the low-lying areas of the Fraser Delta, blanketting us from Langley to Ladner, wiping out distances and colour. Yesterday was typical.

There was a hint of blue sky to the south-east; we headed in that direction, driving to Cloverdale on farm roads to the south of the highway. The mist drew a curtain around us, isolating us in a circle with one or two items at a time:

Gateway to a field.

Entrance to an unseen home.

Ditches.

U Catch Em.

(Trout swimming in the mist?)

Soggy field and rusty barbed wire.

We stopped to photograph two eagles in a tree, just over our heads; all we got were grey shapes. A hawk on a telephone pole was a brownish silhouette. We found a heron in a ditch:


When Laurie's flash went off, the heron rose and flew away, disappearing almost instantly into the fog.

Laurie leaned out the car window to take a photo of starlings on a lawn; they didn't approve:

"We're outta here!"

Meanwhile, on the driver's side of the car:

Ignoring the car a few feet away.

We never did find that patch of blue sky. Maybe tomorrow.

.

Scrambled birds

Post # 3 about the 2008 Eastside Culture Crawl. Previous posts: Crawling at the Wilder Snail, and Sweeping nudes and other mix-ups.


A few Crawly birds for your consideration:

The crow is an appropriate place to start; it is, perhaps, the signature bird of Strathcona. Look any direction for a minute or two in the daytime, and you'll see one. And often, it is doing something like this:

"Stealing Time", by Sandra Bilawich

Of course, most of the crows work on something a bit more organic than old clocks.

Sandra Bilawich combines stone, metal, and wood in imaginative sculptures. Most, like this crow, are made with reclaimed materials. Many, again like the crow, pull objects out of their customary contexts.

Her Crawl display filled her living room and kitchen. I loved the coffee table and candlestick:

Recycled boards, rusty metal "teeth", rock. Insulator and gears.

Not all is rustic, though. The display included polished sculptures in luscious marbles:

"Camouflage", Vancouver Island marble

But I promised you birds. The small sculpture on the coffee table is a loon, in Italian marble.

And here's a cuckoo clock, in the kitchen:

Reclaimed metal parts, beach stone, with barnacles (click for full size)

Sandra writes,

"The creation of the cuckoo clocks began as a joke. Friends would come to visit and express frustration at never knowing the time. So I built something based on the old barber's clock where the face and movement are backwards and must be looked at through a mirror."

A bird needs a bird bath. We took this photo in Sandra's garden last summer:



Her website is Elemental Designs. Beautiful work!

On with the Crawl.

Passing the schoolyard, I heard the sounds of children at play. The squeak of swing chains, of bent bicycle wheels, the dying groans of battered skateboards (I've seen the remains, decently interred in a garden across the street). But it was Saturday, and the playground was empty. Ghosts?

No. Starlings. Hiding in the evergreens on the corner and spooking the passersby.


A few came out for air and perched on the bare branches. Mystery solved. (I didn't believe in ghosts of skateboards, anyhow.)

Around the corner, we stopped in Kathleen Barrett's house to see her work. More on that later, but since we're looking at birds, can you identify this one?

Collage of found objects. With bird skull.

.

Fanning the flames

Summer weather! At long last! Yesterday was suddenly warm, bordering on too hot. (It takes me a while to acclimatize again.)

I was babysitting all day, after end-of-school-year events the night before. By the end of the day, I was too tired to blog until today.

Standing on the back porch of my son's house, I saw, on a roof a block away, this starling. He was waving his wings rapidly, as if flying against the wind, but anchored in one spot. He sang loudly all the while. I watched for a couple of minutes, not wanting to miss the show. He kept it up, though, so I went inside for my camera.

Fanning his wings a bit more slowly now. Still in full song.

A brief flight, still singing.

Back on the roof, calling, calling.

I saw no interested female. I hope he found one, though.
.