| Sunday, February 28, 2021 | | Riding February's Roller Coaster | It’s officially lunchtime, on the last day of February, and this is what I know: I awoke to a non-dawn of overcast skies. By about 8 a.m. there were rifts and light peeking through the cloud cover. By mid-morning we had true sunshine! Now it has been raining for about 30 minutes. Welcome to February! The big consolation is the temperature—a decent mid-50’s. It seems the last day is trying hard to give us the whole month’s roller-coaster weather in summary.
We had (I looked it up) a full half-month of rain (and plenty of days beyond that of overcast skies when rain threatened), and more than 7” in all. We are so ready for some sunshine! You can bet I got out every day I could, at least for a short walk, if it wasn’t raining. My body (and my mind and spirit) do better when I have been able to walk than when I sit all day. So I walked! I walked the beach in Nags Head and Kitty Hawk and Carova, I walked the Pea Island berm, I walked the boardwalk at Sandy Run in Kitty Hawk, I walked the Duck Boardwalk, I walked Jockey’s Ridge, I walked around Bodie Light.
I love to walk. I am not an aerobic walker—well, not unless toting a lot of gear (more on that below)—rather, I am a contemplative walker. I want to listen, both to the world around me and to my innermost thoughts. I want to listen to the waves crashing or lapping. This time of year, I want to listen to the season’s last Swan calls and tune my ears, first, to Blue Jays imitating Osprey, and then, come mid-March, to the Osprey themselves arriving and calling to their mates. I want to listen for the still, small, gentle, loving voice I attribute to God’s Spirit speaking, especially when I am agitated or weary. And I want to watch, watch the light change, watch for birds and beasts, watch for clues and assurances that I am companioned in my journeying.
I learned early in the month that a duck rare to this part of the world had been spotted up in Corolla. I went north on the next non-rain day. Sure enough, a drake Long Tailed Duck paddled all by its lonesome in a retention pond near the Harris Teeter. I checked again yesterday but it was gone. Hopefully it found its way back to join others of its kind. The day I was there, the pond was still enough to reflect, in turn, the colors of the sky or the vegetation at the shoreline in the water, giving some gorgeous backgrounds for Mr. Duck to show off just how handsome he really was. Once, a school bus passed by and those colors in the water were almost surreal. Headed home I could not resist stopping to watch the Swan in still water and wonderful light at our little Duck cove.
I got up early on our coldest morning hoping for an icy reflection of Bodie Light with some vibrant color to warm me up. The color never showed up; instead, two Bald Eagles in their second year, based on their plumage, flew overhead.
I took a deep breath and rented two lenses for a week near the end of the month, and managed to get 3 days of decent enough weather to try them out. Funny thing, as I have aged, I have gained weight—and so have my long lenses. I swear they weigh more now than when I got them! I find the largest impossible to hand-hold, and I am challenged to tote both a lens and my tripod for any length of walk. So it is time to acknowledge reality, and trade my older gear, wonderful as it has been, for newer, lighter-weight tools. I want to be doing what I love to do for many years to come. After some rigorous testing, I have settled on a Sigma 150-600mm sports version that weighs less than either of the two lenses I will trade in to pay for it. Win-win-win. All this is a round-about way to explain why this blog has so many birds. I needed subjects—and the wintering-over waterfowl and long-legged waders of Pea Island and the Swan in Duck gave me lots of opportunity for my testing.
What convinced me to do the test in the first place was purchasing wildlife photographer Kevin Dooley’s wonderful book, Wild Faces in Wild Places, which chronicles his decades-long love of Africa in particular and this beautiful world in general. I learned that the Sigma is his go-to wildlife lens of choice, and seeing his magnificent images convinced me to give the lens a try.
I drove up to Carova twice (no horses in sight, and the conditions were not conducive to finding them on the beach anyway) but on my first ride, Pelicans coming into their breeding plumage standing on shore and gliding over shore-break waves were my gift. The second trip, the skies were magnificent in late afternoon.
It’s not yet time to see many mammals except fleeting glimpses in passing. Foxes are denning, bear are slumbering, and horses will be more apt to be seaside when the weather warms and the flies hatch. But we had a rainy day treat last week when three deer showed up to browse our overgrown back yard. I made a couple images photographing through a rainy window; they haven’t returned.
Yesterday our yard was full of chattering and calling Robins and Red-winged Blackbirds. A friend reported spotting an Osprey fishing at dawn! Soon the Swan will leave our cove in Duck and head north, joined by all those ducks and Snow Geese from Pea Island, as the Osprey return to repair and rebuild their nests. The earth keeps whirling around the sun. Spring is indeed coming.
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click for larger image | Who knows what sparked this confrontation? Onlookers honked from their side of the fray the whole time. |
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click for larger image | Part of my lens test--to show the beautiful differences between immature and adult swan. This is a juvenile. |
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click for larger image | I don't know who was more surprised when I rounded the Sandy Run boardwalk and spotted these two otters! |
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click for larger image | Here is a spring sign--pelicans coming into breeding plumage. Can't wait for more chances to photograph them close up! |
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click for larger image | Yesterday's sky show near dusk, in Carova, was more spectacular than the actual sunset an hour later. |
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posted by eturek at 9:04 PM |
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| Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | | The Enchanted Forest | My family hates snow. I get it—Pete and his kids grew up in CT, where snow days are not fun days, rarely is school or work canceled, and just shoveling a path out of the driveway (and then another to get in again at night) is more than a good day’s work. As I write this, snow is still falling up there, and at last count, the state might get two feet! That kind of snow creates all sorts of issues, from safe driving to consistent electric power. I grew up in northern VA, and snow there usually did mean a day off of school, maybe two, and a snowman in the yard. Once we had so much snow that Dad and I even built a kind of snow fort. Childhood snow and adulthood snow are two different worlds, for sure.
I moved to the Outer Banks when I was 19, to a land that rarely got snow. And when we did, schools were canceled, work was canceled or delayed, and everybody pretty much hunkered down and enjoyed the day off. We did have a huge winter blizzard, maybe even more than one, in the winter of 1979/80 that knocked power out for days. And it was cold! Snow lost most of its magic for me that winter.
But as I have aged, I have also grown younger. Snow’s magic is back! I would much rather have 32 degrees and snow than 38 degrees and cold, cold rain. Besides, a significant snowfall is rare enough here that I can work up a good case of anticipatory excitement just planning out where I will go if the flakes fly.
We had a snow dusting here on Thursday; in contrast, the Currituck mainland got enough to hang around until Sunday’s warm rain. I saw maybe a scant inch on our porch in Colington, the wet heavy kind that is so pretty to photograph. Strong winds meant snow was plastered up against the windward sides of the live oaks and pines. Out I went, bundled up like Nanook of the South. Or the Michelin Woman. Whatever. Hat, down coat, scarf, warm photographer gloves, lined jeans and boots. I was Ready. But when I got out to the beach, you could scarcely tell any snow had fallen at all! Roofs were clean, despite the snow still falling. Thankfully, the roads were not icy. Between the wind and the salt air and the traffic, nothing was sticking. So I drove north. I knew from the weather radar and forecast that more snow should have fallen in Corolla than in Nags Head. I drove all the way up to the Currituck lighthouse and Whalehead Club, where the kiss of snow sparkled on the rooftop of the Whalehead and on the feathery branches around the lighthouse. I made a few images there before heading north again. My goal was the woods of the Currituck Reserve.
The Currituck section of maritime forest is my favorite here. I have tramped the many trails of Nags Head Woods, have walked a little in Buxton Woods, have explored Kitty Hawk Woods. While they all share similarities, the spacing of the live oaks and pines in the Currituck Reserve allows dappled light to reach the understory. In spring’s green the woods are lush with moss; the world feels fresh and new and inviting. But in snow! The woods become an enchanted wonderland.
When I arrived, the sun still had not broken through the cloud cover though the snow had mostly stopped falling. By the time I walked most of the side pinestraw trail, and then walked the boardwalk to the Sound and turned around to walk back, bright sun shafts were already melting the snow from the boardwalk and the tree trunks. Golden pine straw interspersed with wispy fronds of crystalized icing appeared as if out of some fairy tale. I saw no wild horses, no herons or kingfishers in the marsh. My companions were those of an innocent imagination. Looking at the photographs I made there, I would not be surprised at all to see a Faun (like Mr. Tumnus), or a Unicorn (like Jewel), or even Aslan Himself peeking out of the wooded shadows. For that magical hour or so, I stepped backwards into childhood, where the woods whisper wondrous secrets for those who stop and listen. I stopped often, listening to the trees creak in the wind as they leaned into one another.
Come walk with me. What do you see? What might you hear? What—or whom—can you imagine in such mystical moments?
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click for larger image | Here are the woods as I stepped through the gate and walked down the boardwalk toward the Sound. Heavy cloud cover. Quiet. |
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click for larger image | There is an easy, well-marked side trail, with steps down off the boardwalk, that leads north through the woods. I walked there first. |
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click for larger image | The trail was wet in sections but I have great walking boots. See the heart puddle reflecting the trees? |
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click for larger image | By the time I had retraced my steps on the woods trail, and walked the boardwalk out to the sound, the sun was shining brightly. |
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click for larger image | There was slightly more snow around the Whalehead Club footbridge than around the Whalehead Club itself. |
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posted by eturek at 10:33 PM |
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