| Saturday, May 14, 2011 | | Spring Has Sprung | For the past two weeks I have been planning this blog. I was going to call it “Spring Fling” or something equally clever. Something that would evoke all the ideas and ideals that spring brings: freshness, renewal, growth, flowering, birth, all of that. I’ve had more snatches of time outdoors than long, leisurely stretches of time, but those snatches revealed springdom. Then a couple more days would pass. Buds turned into flowers or unfurled leaves. Birds began to nest—or to parent nestlings, depending on species. I’d want to write about the rains or the sunshine and the weather would swing again before I got a word on the page.
Now in the middle of a genuine spring, with temperatures that have hovered around the 65-75 range instead of catapulting themselves into an early summer, my own heart is stuck in winter and words are hard to hew out of the frozen ground my brain seems to have become.
So what I have to offer are the pictures, the windows on an Outer Banks spring that is, at its essence, lovely and love-filled, as spring is prone to be. This is all I have to offer, and to paraphrase poet e. e. cummings, this is just so long, and long enough.
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click for larger image | What's Wrong With This Picture? Mom & Pop should not both be away from the nest, that's what. Egg-laying late this year--not til early May. |
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click for larger image | By early May, this Bodie Island Great Egret was wearing spring green: the area around the eye, for breeding. |
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click for larger image | Despite his best efforts, the female tricolored heron was playing hard to get. Early May, Bodie Lighthouse. |
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click for larger image | While egrets and herons are just beginning to couple up, this mama duck has a growing flock already. |
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click for larger image | It takes a lot of fish to feed a nesting Mama osprey--even more when the chicks hatch. This Dad was fishing by the NH Pier. |
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click for larger image | For several days last week, the pelicans were flying over the dunes rather than over the water. They're in full breeding colors now. |
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click for larger image | Here's a different perspective, watching the first pelican lead the way and set the pace. |
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click for larger image | This little group of goslings, four in all, along with Mom and Dad, has been stopping traffic on Colington Rd for over a week. |
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posted by eturek at 8:11 PM |
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