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Posts Tagged ‘pat bean’

Oh What a Beautiful Morning …

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , , on April 30, 2012| 13 Comments »

 Oh What a Beautiful Morning …

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the faster lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lions wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle … when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

First view of Lake Arrowhead's sunrise -- Photo by Pat Bean

A Howl of a Sunrise

Five minutes later ... Photo by Pat Bean

When Pepper and I stepped out of the RV on our last morning at Lake Arrowhead State Park. It was to a chorus of howling coyotes.

My new canine companion perked her ears up, listened for a couple of seconds and then joined their chorus. What a great traveler she’s going to make, I thought.

Then I stepped around the side of my RV, Pepper’s leash in one hand and a cup of cream-laced African coffee in the other hand, and watched the sun rise.

Every morning should have such a great start.

Bean’s Pat: The Greening of the Great Egret  http://tinyurl.com/br8fhd A great bird decked out in its courting colors.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Together

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2012| 5 Comments »

Thomas Young together with Snow, his gyrfalcon/peregrine hybrid bird. Both were 37 years old in 2006 when I took this photo.

 “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” – Mahatma Gandhi

One Man’s Love of Animals

Togetherness: Sheena may be a cougar but she acts as if she's right where she belongs. -- Photo by Pat Bean

During my 2006 wanderings, I came across Queen Wilhelmina State Park near Mena. Arkansas. One of its attractions at that time was a small zoo and wildlife sanctuary operated by Thomas Young, a wildlife rehabilitator.

The zoo animals included a bear, a timber wolf cub, orphaned fawns, bobcats, wild turkeys, hawks, owls, raccoons – and a cougar named Sheena. Almost all of them had been injured at some point in time.

The side of a small unpainted wooden building on the property told the real story of this place. Large white lettering boldly announced that 12 bears, 5,000 hawks, 2,000 owls, 22 bald eagles, 18 golden eagles and thousands of small mammals had been released back into the wild by Young. The $4 entry fee to the zoo helped cover his expenses.

It was while I was questioning Paul, a volunteer and apprentice falconer working with Young, that I saw Tom for the first time.

Paul pointed him out to me as the long-haired man who had just appeared with a turkey neck in his hand to feed a wild turkey vulture that had just landed in the park.

As I watched the scene from about 30 feet away, the volunteer told me the vulture was a bird Tom had rehabilitated. Later Tom told me it was actually the parent of the rescued bird. He said it was the first time this particularly vulture had fed from his hand.

I was more amazed that he could tell the difference between two vultures than that a large, society-designated-ugly, wild bird had fed from his hand. .

“For some reason it’s come to trust me,” Tom said of his vulture friend. “A while back it brought its young here for me to babysit while it flew off on some business for about three hours.”

The volunteer had already told me this story in more detail but I was still fascinated with Tom’s less wordy rerun along with a sparse sketch of his life.

This man was a doer not a talker.

Tom said the park’s lofty location in the Ouachita Mountains made it ideal for releasing rehabilitated birds back to the wild. I was privileged to see one such release the next day, an awesome red-shouldered hawk that Tom released from the overlook just beyond the park’s lodge.

The bird simply fall off the edge of the mountain and glided away, one of the most beautiful sights any birder could ever hope to see.

Bean’s Pat: A Traveler’s Tale http://tinyurl.com/brbfpsh Take an armchair tour of a Papua, New Guinea, village.

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Favorite Places: Lake Arrowhead

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2012| 6 Comments »

 “The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life … The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds – how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday lives – and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!” – John Burroughs

Delightful, Colorful, Awesome Birds

Great blue heron at Lake Arrowhead State Park -- Photo by Pat Bean

From the Bullock oriole’s flash of bright orange feathers as it flew across my path to the Canada geese that strutted down to the lake, birds were constantly making their presence known during my visit to Texas’ Lake Arrowhead State Park.

For an avid birder like myself, it was better than my favorite Jack-in-the-Box chocolate milkshake high — and came without the calories.

Mockingbirds were plentiful, making my mind play tricks on me when I saw one that didn’t quite fit in. I was thinking it might have been a tropical mockingbird, but then this quite-out-of-place species was on my mind from reports of one of them being seen in Texas’ Sabine Woods. I certainly wasn’t sure enough of my find to add it to my life list of birds.

Canada geese strutted across the manicured lawn near the fishing pier, making it easy to photograph them. I wish I had been able to capture the flock that had honked their way overhead earlier in the morning. But as I remind people often, I'm a writer not a photographer, and the only camera I own is a pocket Canon point and shoot. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I saw a great blue heron at the fish-cleaning station near the park’s fishing pier, but before I could get a picture,  it flew away. It landed in the lake on the opposite side of the pier and began fishing for its breakfast.

When I looked at it through my binoculars at it,  I saw a dozen or so spotted sandpipers cruising the shoreline in front of it, and a yellowlegs a bit farther out in the water. It had to have been a lesser yellowlegs because it was too close in size to the sandpipers to be a greater.

As I continued to watch the sandpipers, a red-winged blackbird flew in beside them. Its shoulder epaulets were so brilliantly red that they made my heart skip a beat.

Grackles, robins, snowy and great egrets, swallows (cave, I think), killdeer, scissor-tailed flycatchers and circling turkey vultures were among the many other birds at the park that I saw.

While I suspect the park is mostly favored by fishermen, it’s now on this birders list of favorite places, too.

Bean’s Pat: Trees for Arbor Day http://tinyurl.com/crhxqtu For tree huggers like me, a slide show from the National Wildlife Federation.

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Walking Among Prairie Dogs

Posted in Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on April 26, 2012| 16 Comments »

 “With all things and in all things, we are relatives.” Sioux proverb

A healthy crop of young prairie dog pups. -- Photo by pat Bean

Good Reasons to be Cautious

An adult prairie dog giving me the eagle eye after she shooed all the young ones below. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I don’t often get a chance to see prairie dogs, and even rarer do I get to walk among them.

But that’s the opportunity I had at Texas’ Lake Arrowhead State Park just outside of Wichita Falls.

To get some photographs of them, I left my canine traveling companion, Pepper, in the RV. She loves to chase anything on the ground that moves. So far, robins and butterflies have been her favorite targets, but I’m sure prairie dogs would also be high on her list.

While I keep her in check with a 10-foot retractable leash, I figured her quick dash toward a prairie dog would send them deep in their underground tunnel homes.

All about prairie dogs sign at Lake Arrowhead. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The truth is they didn’t let me get too close before they would dash below, especially since there were babies among them. On my approach an adult would shoo them below and then turn around and give me a chittery war cry while keeping an evil, eagle eye on my movements.

I did, however, manage to snag a few pictures.

I sort of feel I owe prairie dogs an apology. As a reporter I covered the release of rare and endangered black-footed ferrets in the middle of a prairie dog colony in the Browns Park area of Colorado back in the late 1990s.

Prairie dogs are ferrets preferred menu item. They are also on the coyote’s menu as well, and Lake Arrowhead is full of coyotes. Even so, I must say that the prairie dogs numbers don’t seem to have diminished since I last visited the park. Prey usually  reproduces quicker and more abundantly than predators.

Bean’s Pat: Love Thy Bike http://tinyurl.com/cdsrs2o See Los Angeles beaches from a bike seat.

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Eighter from Decatur

Posted in Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on April 25, 2012| 4 Comments »

“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” – Bill Gates

Heading North on Highway 287

Decatur, Texas wall mural -- Photo by Pat Bean

Getting out of the mass traffic jam known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area yesterday took far too long for my liking. But finally I made it to Highway 287, a road I traveled many times when I lived and worked in Northern Utah and made yearly trips to Texas to visit family.

Once it went through all the little podunk towns, like Rhome, Alvord, Sunset, Fruitland, Henrietta and Decatur, as it made its way from Fort Worth to Amarillo. Now, so as not to slow travelers down, the grown-up, four-lane 287 bypasses them.

Decatyr courthouse. I love the town squares I find in many old Texas small towns. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I often rebel against this thirst for speed and quite often take the highway’s business routes so as to taste the flavor of each town’s unique personality. Decatur was one of the places I wanted to get to know better yesterday.

One of the first things I saw in Decatur, after passing the abandoned Petrified Wood Gas Station that is now a designated historical site, was a mural on the side of a dinky convenience store. It stopped me and my camera in its tracks.

While I’m not a craps player, I had heard the term eighter from Decatur and knew that it was slang for rolling an eight with dice.

But what was its origin? Did the saying actually begin here in Decatur? Wandering/wondering minds like mine always want to know.

One of the stories I came up with when I did some online evening research was that it began with Will Cooper, a Decatur boy who loved playing dice and also a servant girl named Ada.

Will was hired as a cook for Army regulars and some Home Guard members who were headed east to participate in a 1900 re-enactment of the Civil War battle of Manassas, also known as battle of Bull Run.

It was a long train ride to Virginia and the troops entertained themselves playing dice. Will’s lucky slang wish, “Ada from Decatur,” when he wanted a roll of eight spread among the Texas troops on the east-bound train.

Somewhere along the line it became eighter instead of Ada, or so this particular story goes. There’s always more than one when unrecorded memories are on the line.

Do you have another story to add?

Bean’s Pat: A Frank Angle  http://tinyurl.com/7ntltz7 On a cute couple. My kids grew up with Rocky and Bullwinkle, which meant I got to watch them too. Anybody else out there remember these two loveable crazies?

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Introducing Pepper

Posted in Dogs, Travel, tagged , , , , , on April 23, 2012| 40 Comments »

Note the tail kink -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles Schulz

Already the Love of My Life

I wanted a 20 to 25 pound, female canine, one to three years old, from the sporting group of dogs, as the replacement for Maggie, my treasured, Cocker Spaniel traveling companion. I got an 11-pound, four-month-old puppy instead.

It was meant to be.

She’s a cross, most likely, between a Scottie and a Schnauzer. I’ll never know for sure because I’m not going to pay the $60 for DNA testing. It really doesn’t matter.

She has chocolate, melt-your-heart eyes, when you can see them beneath her long silky hair – I think we’ll do a little trimming soon. She bounds when she runs, has a kink in her tail and bless my lucky stars, is potty-trained.

Why won't they play with me? -- Photo by Pat Bean

She came from the third animal shelter I visited, it being the Second Change SPCA Shelter in Plano, Texas.

I’m not sure if I picked her, or she picked me. It was as if our eyes met and we both knew we belonged together. The deed was sealed when someone put her in my lap and she nestled down as if this was where she belonged.

Although friendly with everyone, she has already decided she wants to keep me in her sight. For example, she’s lying at me feet right now as I sit at my daughter’s dining room table, and she followed me into the kitchen twice when I got up to refill my coffee cup.

Photographing Pepper wasn't easy. Not only was she constantly moving, her black fur made her look like a bundle of rags in most of the pictures I took. She actually has some red and blonde tints in her coat, the kind women pay a fortune to achieve, that show well in the sunlight. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I went out to my RV, Gypsy Lee,  for our first night together,  she eagerly bounded into the motorhome and was soon settled comfortably beside me on the over-the-cab bed. When I got up in the middle of the night to visit the powder room, she greeted me on my return as if I had been gone a week.

I’ve named her Pepper, partly because of the spice I know she’s going to add to my life and partly because she is so full of it. She acts as if that’s been her name all her life, even though the shelter called her Kenzie.

I yelled Pepper yesterday evening when I saw her headed for the kitchen and the food bowl of my daughter’s two dogs. I yelled because her tummy was already full, and I didn’t want her eating more and getting sick.

Face-off with my daughter's Cocker Spaniel, MacBean. -- Photo by pat Bean

She immediately did a U-turn, jumped back up into my lap and gave me puppy kisses.

Pepper and I will be getting on the road heading west tomorrow. She has already tried out the co-pilot seat and it fits her well.

I suspect that when we pull away from my daughter’s home, I will turn to Pepper and quote Dr. Seuss: “Oh the places we’ll go, and the things we’ll see.” That’s what I told Maggie when we got on the road eight years ago. And we did.

Bean’s Pat: Stopping the Wind http://tinyurl.com/cbtkqwo Mostly a reblog of Trey Ramsey’s blog by someone trying to change their future. It includes some hard-nosed, kick-butt advice for all of us who are trying to meet new goals. I took notes.

 

 http://tinyurl.com/cbtkqwo

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sun

Posted in Nature, Weekly Photo Challenge, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2012| 9 Comments »

“Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don’t worry … I’m here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.” – Charlie Brown to Snoopy.

Life-Giving

Without the sun there would be no sunflowers.

Sunflower at Cedar Hill State Park in Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Or poppies.

Poppy, Ogden, Utah -- Photo by Pat Bean

Bean’s Pat: DENY Designs http://tinyurl.com/crbdgud Thinking outside the box. Since I live in a 22-foot by 8-foot RV, this one blows my mind. But it’s fun to think about.

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Searching for Creativity

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 20, 2012| 13 Comments »

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” – Edwin Land

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

Great blue heron hunting for its dinner along the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades.

Two Photographs

When I haven’t a clue as to what I’m going to write about, I first turn to my list of potential blog topics.

That didn’t work this time. In fact it might be time for me to clean up the long list as I didn’t understand half my suggestions. Bright ideas, I’ve discovered, often lose meaning if left stagnating too long.

There is also the fact that what you write one day will never be the same thing you will write about the next day. Our perceptions about the meaning of life, or whatever, are constantly changing. Knowing this, I think, is why I’m such a fanatic journal keeper.

"Won't you step into my Everglades parlor?" -- Photo by Pat Bean

Anyway, with my written list failing me, I turned to my photographs and came across two that actually turned on the electricity in my brain. One was of an alligator lying in wait for a meal, and the other was of a great blue heron quietly waiting for its dinner to come into reach.

The differences had me thinking how all living things on this planet have the same needs. And about where each of the species fit in the food chain.

The two photos also spoke to me of patience, a thing I seriously lack. Without a bit of patience, neither of these species would have their next meal.

Then I thought of the different reactions the two photos would elicit from viewers. Oohs and aahs for the heron of course, and probably some yucks for the alligator. When I post a photo of one of these reptiles I usually get an e-mail from a daughter-in-law telling me not to get too close.

Putting two unlike things together, according to some of the self-help books I’ve read, is a good way to spark one’s creativity. I haven’t done it much, but I’m now convinced I should do it more. I mean it got me off the hook for today’s blog.

Now I’m curious as to readers’ reactions to the two photos. Tell, please.

Bean’s Pat: A Word in Your Ear; http://tinyurl.com/74zt46m For those of us who miss too many sunsets.

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Favorite Things: Egrets

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

Egrets
 
Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from thorns; soon
the mosquitoes

This great egret regally watched all the comings and goings from its perch aboard a boat at a Key West, Florida, dock. -- Photo by Pat Bean

smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that’s how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets – – –
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them – – –
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

        — Mary Oliver
 
Snoweys, Greats, and Cattle
 

Snowy egret on left, great egret on right, northern shoveler in the water in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I first became one of those crazy birders, it was easy to identify a snowy egret, which for a long time was the only egret that I saw.  They were these tall, white, graceful birds with a long, slender black bill, and black legs with golden-yellow feet, which I liked to think of as their slippers.  I saw these delightful shorebirds just about anywhere there was water when I lived in Northern Utah.

 
The next egret I saw was a shorter, chunkier one that looked like parts of its body had been dipped in liquid wheat. occasionally I would see one with a wheat-colored crest, which I learned was its breeding cap. These were cattle egret, and wandering around a herd of the four-legged critters were where you almost always found them.
 
It took me a long while before I saw a great egret in Northern Utah, although when I traveled east of the Rockies, this was suddenly the most common egret I started seeing. It’s a tall, lanky bird with a long, slender yellow bill and black legs and feet.
 
Egrets, well the snowy and the great since the cattle egret didn’t migrate to America until the 1950s, were the inspiration for the creation of the Audubon Society. The main purpose of the conservation organization, of which I’m a proud member, when it was first formed was to protect the egrets from extinction. They were being killed by the thousands simply to provide fanciful plumes for women’s hats.
 
Tsk! Tsk! I’d like to think we vain females know better these days. Most of us do, I believe.  
 
Bean’s Pat: Serenity Spell http://tinyurl.com/6wgdtdd Since it’s a bird day, read all about red-winged blackbirds.
 

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Favorite Places: Lake Wister State Park, Oklahoma

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on April 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

“Wilderness begins in the human mind.” Edward Abbey

The Poteau River

Letting the worries about tomorrow and finding help for my ailing RV, Gypsy Lee,go, I watched as a great egret fished for its dinner on the opposite bank of the Poteau River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was late evening when I arrived at Lake Wister State Park, a place of refuge for the night while I pondered my first on-the-road crisis in my RV, Gypsy Lee.

I watched the sun as it sank beneath the horizon and allowed it and the river to soothe my soul. I felt grateful just to be alive. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The crisis turned out to be simply a need for new brake pads. The pads, however, had to be specially ordered, which gave me three days to enjoy the park.

The first night, a Sunday when all the places that could service my RV were closed, began as a tense one at the park, where I had parked below the dam beside the Poteau River.

A walk along the river with my canine traveling companion just as the sun was bidding a good-night to all on this side of the world with a pink glowing sky, massaged away the tension in my body.

Mother Nature has a way of doing that to me. Despite my RV woes, it’s a night that I remember fondly.

Bean’s Pat: Mike’s Look at Life http://m5son.wordpress.com A gentle landscape and thoughtful blog that lets me see the world through fresh eyes.

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