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Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

Living Backwards: The Japanese Magnolia Tree

Posted in Birds, Nature, tagged on March 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

 

“No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.” ~Brendan Francis

        I went away for a few days and came back to a tree full of pink and white blossoms. The small Japanese magnolia

Japanese Magnolia: A tree that blooms before it leafs ... Photo by Pat Bean

 tree in my son’s Texas Gulf Coast front yard has exploded into spring. This is a tree that blooms before it leafs, like a human who chooses to eat their chocolate torte before their liver and onions.

       I like it’s attitude. Always saving the best for last is not a good idea in my book of life.

       The Japanese magnolia, or tulip tree as it is sometimes called, is among the first harbingers of spring. Other trees here in Lake Jackson, well except for the evergreen live oak, are still lifeless, their naked branches serving as inviting perches for the chickadees, warblers, sparrows, waxwings, blue jays, robins, starlings, grackles, pileated woodpeckers, shrikes, cardinals and red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks that frequent my son’s neighborhood.  I enjoy their easily viewable presence these winter-morphing-into-spring days, knowing that soon they will be able to hide from my sight among leafy shadows.

         Each season, each day his its own specialness. A dandelion brightens a patch of clover in the park across the street. A cloudless blue sky beckons me to get out and take a walk. I leave the window above my head open at night and snuggle beneath the soft covers.  

       And today I smashed one of the fallen Japanese magnolia blossoms in my hand to get the full effect of its strong scent. It’s a woodsy aroma, sort of like moss growing alongside a small stream.

      It smells like spring is coming.

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My Grandmother’s Red Bird

Posted in Birds, tagged on February 21, 2010| 4 Comments »

Heroes take journeys, confront dragons and discover the treasure of their true self.”  — Carol Lynn Pearson

This pencil drawing of a northern cardinal once belonged to my grandmother and is the oldest thing I own. ... Photo of painting by Pat Bean

 

 I’m the opposite of a pack rat. I feel you either need to use something or get rid of it. No antique dealer is ever going to find a 150-year-old treasure in my attic – not that the RV I currently live in has one. 

As I look around my tiny living space, I do, however, fine one item from my childhood. It’s a small pencil drawing of a northern cardinal that belonged to my grandmother.  

I’m not sure how I ended up with it, but it has found its place in every home I’ve lived in since she died. And that includes the present wheeled one.  

I came to birding as a late-late bloomer, but I suspect that the seed for this passion might have had something to do with my grandmother’s wall-hanging red bird.  

I thought about her gift to me yesterday as I watched a handsome cardinal brighten an overcast blustery day with his scarlet feathers and happy song.  

What-cheer, what-cheer, what cheer, he sang. 

 Here was a treasure not hidden away in an attic, but proclaiming his worth to all who would look and listen. I was cheered.

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A Couple of Dove Imports

Posted in Birds, tagged on February 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

                            “All human beings are interconnected, one with all other elements in creation.” – Henry Reed

Eurasian collarded dove ... Photo by Arpingstone

African collared dove ... Photo by Coen Elemans, Wageningen University, Netherlands

It was with interest that I read a comment on Birdtalk this morning about two African collared doves sighted in Logan, Utah. It brought to memory my search in the 1990s for the Eurasian collared dove after the first ones were spotted in Utah, where I was then living.

After a year’s search, I found my first Eurasian collared dove in Colorado. Today I see them in Texas on just about every bird-watching outing.

The Eurasian collared dove was accidentally introduced into the Bahamas in the mid-1970s and by the 1980s had spread to the North American mainland. It is larger and stockier than the mourning dove, and concerns have been raised about how this introduced species is affecting our native doves.

The African collared doves spotted in Logan were once known as ringed turtle-doves and are a look-alike cousin of the Eurasian collared dove. They are most likely released or escaped cage birds. It’s a growing phenomenon, one birders like myself believe will eventually lead to a North American population of African collared doves. Is that a good or bad thing. I don’t know.

Do you?

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The Pileated and the Red-Tailed

Posted in Birds, tagged , , on January 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

I heard a loud squawking outside my RV and went out, binoculars in hand, to investigate.

Pileated Woodpecker ... Photo courtesy Wikimedia

 It didn’t take me long to find the source, a pileated woodpecker. It was clinging well above my head to the side of a tall, winter-barren tree. This smaller look-alike version of the sought-after ivory-billed woodpecker was a frequent sight near my son’s home in Lake Jackson, Texas, but getting such a close look at one still stirred this birder’s heart.

As I watched, the woodpecker’s squawk went from a loud kuk-kuk-kuk to a KUTCH-KUTCH-KUTCH-KUTCH-KUTCH screech that harassed the eardrums. Through my binoculars, I noted what could only be described as a glare on its red-topped, long-billed face.

Following the direction of the bird’s gaze with my binoculars, I spotted the source of the agitation. It was a handsome red-tailed hawk occupying the same tree. After a minute or so more, the hawk conceded defeat, spreading its broad wings to the air and flashing a rusty red tail as it escaped the woodpecker’s cacophony.

The pileated hesitated only a few seconds before taking off in the same direction.

 While I may never know the thrill of sighting an ivory-billed, a bird that was once thought extinct and which some birders now believe they’ve seen (and I believe them), I felt honored to have shared a few minutes with its cousin in such a lively tableau.

Life is good.

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The Bird Not Seen

Posted in Birds, tagged , on January 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A neotropic cormorant and its reflection in Alligator Lake at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco, Texas ... Photo by Pat Bean

While I didn’t get the green kingfisher I was hoping for during my walk to Alligator Lake at Estereo Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco, Texas, I saw 136 birds this past weekend. Seven of these were lifers, birds I was seeing for the very first time.

One of these new birds was the rose-throated becard, which is rare in the valley. The Texas Ornithological Society group I birded with the first day of the organized field trips looked in vain for this becard. I found it the next day when I birded alone with my son and grandson.

On the third day of the field trips, I met up with a woman who had birded with me the first day, so of course I told her about seeing the becard. She said that was OK, because not seeing it meant she had an excuse to return again to the Rio Grande Valley.

Her attitude is a familiar one with the birders I know. One doesn’t even have to see a bird to have a good time. Just walking with Mother Nature is its own reward. One of these days I’m going to finally see the green kingfisher, which is not rare at all here in the valley.

Thankfully there will still be over 400 North American birds not yet on my life list, and thousands of others around the world still waiting to be seen.

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A Vireo, A Refuge and A Compromise

Posted in Birds, tagged on January 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

                                                                                                           

San Bernal National Wildlife Refuge: Invitation to commune with Mother Nature ... Photos by Pat Bean

Reflections ... Photo by Pat Bean

Reflections

Bone-chilling 25-degree temperature, which Texas’ Gulf Coast wind and humidity dropped to a real 12 degrees, had been keeping me confined to my tiny RV for days. So it was with a delirious sense of freedom that today’s 50 degrees of warmth found me at San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. I had come with my son, Lewis, my daughter-in-law, Karen, and my grandson, Scott, for a few hours of birding.

We had barely arrived before spying a small warbler at the entrance to Bobcat Woods. I got excited when I thought it might be a Bell’s vireo, a bird I didn’t yet have on my life list. But it was a white-eyed vireo. The grayish head and yellow markings around the eye, like spectacles, confirmed the identification.

Shrugging off my disappointment, I gave myself to the joy of watching THIS bird. It stayed around long enough that we abandoned it before it abandoned us. I was the last to leave its presence. When I’m birding with a group, I usually distance myself from the others, either going ahead because I want a chance to see a bird before it’s startled away, or straggling behind because I need time alone with Mother Nature.

I was the straggler today.

Besides the birds – over 50 species in three hours time – I found myself marveling at the twisted limbs of live oak trees whose branches were often wider than their trunks, the delicious green of palms and short winter grasses that added color to the marsh’s seasonal grayness, reflective landscapes and clouds in pools of water that lined the boardwalk, and dripping screens of mysterious moss.

While the others made their way past the boardwalk to the reservoir, I stopped to watch butter butts (yellow-rumped warblers) play at the edge of a stream and then to study and identify a winter wren, which closely resembles a house wren. When I looked up, I could see my family waving at me to hurry and catch up.

I did, as fast as I could. But the Bell’s vireo they had been watching was no longer in sight. Of course I was disappointed. Even so, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a moment of the time I spent in companionship with the refuge. It’s comforting mood this day had chased winter from my soul.

 Besides, said the Pollyanna who lives within me, a Bell’s vireo is still out there and eagerly waiting to make my acquaintance.

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The Day I Danced With a Blue-Footed Partner

Posted in Birds, tagged , , on January 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Blue-footed booby ... Photo courtesy Wikimedia

The large white and brown bird with the blue feet didn’t recognize my right to the hiking path. Its home here in The Galapagos Islands, where man has not yet imposed his predatory nature, let it assume it was my equal.

I stopped about a foot away and was quickly mesmerized as the two of us, human and bird, stared eye-to-eye. My birding knowledge finally kicked in, however, and I identified the bird in front of me as a male blue-footed booby. The sex-distinguishing clue was that the pupil in its pale yellow eye was smaller than the pupil of the bird sitting on two eggs in a nest beside the path. I assumed the two birds were mates.

 As these birder thoughts filtered through my brain, the booby blocking my way lifted his right foot and gazed quizzically at me. I didn’t move. He put the right foot down and lifted his left foot and bobbed his head a few times. I smiled at him, and he repeated the maneuvers, the same ones I assumed he had used to woo his breeding female.

 When he lifted his left foot for the third time, I lifted my right foot in reply. For the next couple of minutes he and I continued this Hokey Pokey. It might have gone on longer except the rest of the tour group caught up.

 “Don’t tease the bird,” our guide said when he saw me.

“I’m not,” I replied. “He wanted to dance with me.”

 But since I could feel a thread of impatience coming from the people behind me, I moved off the path and started around the booby. We had been warned not to touch any of the Galapagos animals.

 The booby had no such compulsive restraint. He reached out and gave my leg a quick, non-threatening peck as I passed by him. It felt both like a good-bye handshake, and an invitation to “come back and dance with me.”

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