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Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

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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