Three days to Texas

I'm finishing the last of my packing today and leaving for Texas early tomorrow morning. I'm leaving a lot of stuff at Matty's, in the hope that I'll either be back to stay or be back to pick it up and move elsewhere. I'll sure miss my Matty.

I'll be offline for the next few days on the road, so take care and thank you so much for all your good wishes. I'll be sure to take pictures of my trek through the desert southwest, and maybe I'll even see some birds!

Pumpkins Galore

The Dallas Arboretum is like a fairytale this time of year. The pumpkin could turn into Cinderella's coach. I'm going to let the pictures stand for themselves. It's magical. It's fabulous and an absolute gem of a venue.

I was born in October. Fall colors. Pumpkins. The splash of oranges and crimsons speak to me. The mums are going to burst here in a week or two. The colors are shloshing in my brain. I feel a poem coming on....

October Heat

October, burning leaves
it’s in my memory, inhale,
nose tingles
deep in my blood,
burnt leaf smoke oozes from my pores
airy wisps of ash encircle my head
seeps into my hair.
erie figures drifted in and out of the haze,
rakes in hand
swooshing crimson, orange, and yellow leaves

today, October in the South
air-conditioner whir kicks on at six
wheezes to a halt late evening.
dollars fly about the room
distilling humidity, cooling tepid air,
I sweat.

step on crunchy grass
wind chimes still
flags slacken, droopily oppressed
scurry back indoors
soul compresses

yearn for fire reds, golden, and deep oranges
brown, drab leaves herald fall this year.
it can’t be October.
pumpkins will explode in this heat,
melt into a pumpkin pie
not glow with Halloween candles.

thanks for indulging me. Isn't this gorgeous? Go now -enjoy Autumn at the Arboretum.

http://www.dallasarboretum.org

Yep - bobbing for pumpkins...........how cool is this?

Fall Fever!

Joanne

Last view of the Pacific

make sure to click for bigger on all these, especially the little crab

If you read my other blog, you already know that this whole California thing isn't working out for me. I haven't been able to find work, and time (aka money) has run out. It's been a fun adventure (despite the constant stress of looking for work, money, bills, etc.), and I've seen a lot of new birds (22 lifers since leaving PA), but it's time to pack it in. California has always been my dream, but it's just not a good time for dreaming, I guess. I'll be moving back to Texas for a while to live with my parents (or perhaps my sister), which will be nice. I haven't seen my parents more than a handful of times in the last seven or eight years, so I'm looking forward to spending some time with them. My mom loves to go birding, and San Antonio should yield some amazing birding, especially during the migration, so watch for some exciting posts in the coming weeks. I'll also be driving down through the Central Valley of CA, through Arizona and New Mexico, and a long way across Texas, so I'm hoping to see some raptors and things along the way.

Today, I felt like I should see the Pacific one more time before I go, so I went down to Muir Beach near Muir Woods. I was tempted to do both, but I didn't have a lot of time so I chose the beach. I had been reading about tidal pools and the wealth of life one can find in them, and I'd read that Muir Beach and nearby Slide Ranch were two good places to go.

It turned out to be one of those occasions where the expectations way outdo the reality; that seems to be the theme these days. I'd seen pictures of starfish, urchins, live "eccentric" sand dollars, sea slugs, etc. in my Audubon California guide, but that's not what I saw at Muir or at Slide. Maybe it's the wrong time of year, but I saw only limpets, snails,seaweed, and such. It's possible that we're too far north here for the good stuff.

Still--it was beautiful out there among the rocks. Some highlights:

Muir Beach

a young gull -- Ring-billed?



I don't know what this green rock is, but I like it. Serpentinite?

After a few hours at Muir, I went north about a mile or two to Slide Ranch. Here, the cliffs were a little daunting but I was all over those rocks like a little mountain goat! (a little mountain goat with weak ankles, a banged-up knee, puny muscles, and a tendency to fall down a lot, that is--but I only fell once!)

That handrail and a rope (starts where the handrail ends) are pretty much the only reason I made it down (and back up) alive.

I knew the tide was going out all afternoon, and low tide was supposed to be around 7:30, so there was a little beach when I first got there around 6pm.
The "sand" was more like little crushed rock, blackish gray.
Here, you can see some of that tidal pool life -- snails.More of those purplish round snail things -- Periwinkle? Dogwinkle? They were round, though--not long and conchy like the periwinkle and dogwinkle things in my book. But they have this pretty little abalone-like pearlized bit right at the center of their little spirally shell. Very pretty.

I started to notice, as I watched all these individual gulls who would just land on a rock and stare out at the water, that a lot of them had pink legs and feet -- Herring Gulls?
I'd only seen one Herring Gull before (assuming these are more of them), back in Cape May 2007. It was interesting to watch them as they gazed out at the water; one of them tried perching on a low rock and perhaps trying to find a meal splashing by, but the water was too rough for him and he gave up.

And hey, I managed to get this terrible picture of a couple of Black Oystercatchers:


I couldn't believe it, but this Black Phoebe was down on the beach with me, hawking for insects then coming right back to its perch:I never imagined a little flycatcher would be down there, but he was. This is definitely the same bird Matty Boy and I saw in Oakland, and I'm positive (gulp--I hope) that it's a Black Phoebe. Look at this funny little pic:That's some attitude!

I also saw these guys near the parking lot at Slide Ranch--are they House Finches or Purple Finches? They look too plump and small to be House Finches, but I could of course be wrong:

For a brief moment, I thought I had something exotic like a Pine Grosbeak, but you can see the little finch bill on that guy on the left in the first picture. Let me see if I have a better one... this one's brighter but not much better.

This little guy was peaking out at me; some kind of hermit crab? A big one?

Look at all the little barnacles and limpets and tiny snails on this one rock. Which reminds me: I really your help to learn more about cameras so I can deal with the horrible backlighting (glow) issue that results from taking pics on foggy/cloudy days. It's distracting. I'd like to be able to capture some features of the sky behind things, but the auto setting certainly doesn't always work, and I don't know enough about all those manual settings. F stop? Aperture? (that doesn't seem right) Exposure? I don't know. Suggestions?

After getting back up the cliff:

Fall Take Away

First day of fall, and I've been back a week from PA. I escaped in time. These lovely green leaves on the 90 plus feet tall oak trees will slowly turn colors and then drop like crazy. Layers of crimson and gold. Tons of crunchy acorns. All underfoot awaiting a rake.

Browsing through a copy of Traditional Home (October 2009), a quote caught my eye courtesy of French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing to take away."

Definitely true words when editing a story or plucking at a poem. Or for my father, when the last leaf drifts from the tree, is raked up, and snow blankets the bare limbs.

Joanne

FYI- upon perusing the magazine, the color green is IN. Plus coax quiet rooms to speak up with color. That could also be said of many paragraphs I wrote this morning. Back to the drawing board.

Birding with Matty Boy!

Today I made the drive into Oakland (life city!) to see Matty Boy, teacher of all the maths. What a day we had! Oakland's quite a place, hosting such high-end storefronts as this one:Wow. Despite the fact that this place was on the next block! from his apartment, Matty Boy does not sport any gold teeth (best or otherwise) in his grillz. But Matty's neighborhood was nice, with a great little bar and a Chinese food place close by.

We had planned to walk around Lake Merritt, which turned out to be like a block away from Matty Boy's apartment, but he declared it not birdy enough after a reconnaissance mission by bike earlier this morning. We went instead to several other places, including Alameda's bayfront and "the famous" Arrowhead Marsh (at least that's what a lady birder we met called it). With the lifers I saw today with Matty Boy, and two I saw/heard last night, the list is at a whopping 223! I'm amazed.

The bayshore featured all sorts of gulls and terns, but sadly only the old Double-Crested Cormorants instead of the supposedly common Brandt's and Pelagic Cormorants. Still, between me and Matty's eagle eye, we spotted plenty of great birding action, including lifers Elegant Tern, Black Oystercatcher (creepy red eyes!), and what we thought was a Willet. I was impressed that near the Bay Farm area we found a bird sanctuary (where we saw the Willet from over the fence). A lot of the birds were basically posing on these little concrete structures:This pic was taken not at Alameda but while on my way to Matty's, when I pulled off I-580 near Richmond Point, at what was supposed to be some kind of beach but ended up (it's possible I might've taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque...) being a very tony and private beachfront community. Still, I drove in and illegally parked for a second, hoping to see something interesting. I just saw what look like a bunch of Ring-billed Gulls, CA Gulls and/or Western Gulls, and Double-crested Cormorants. I didn't have much time to gawk, being illegally parked and all.

Turns out, Port Richmond was quite the hub of activity back in the day:This was near the "Rosie the Riveter National Historic Place" (or something). I did not stop, nor did I see Rosie (or Sarah Palin, fortunately) the Riveter. Still, it was kinda neat to see a place that played a big part in such an important time in our history.

Anyway, for some stupid reason I left my camera in the car at the last place we stopped in Alameda, when we saw the Elegant Terns and Black Oystercatchers. Grrr.

After the Alameda shore, we drove on toward the Oakland Airport and stopped at a marshy area. It's always surprising to me how many birds one can see on the vast and empty lands that usually surround airports. Anyway, we drove to an especially marshy area called Arrowhead Marsh (thanks, birding couple we met!), and that's where we saw these:Check out those pink legs! Black-necked Stilts, baby. And here's more of what we thought were Willets, though smart and waterbirdy people may disagree:We also saw some Yellowlegs (Greater?), but these guys' legs and coloring and the white eyebrow looked to me and Matty Boy like those of a Willet in winter plumage. (Apparently, winter plumage is all the rage right now, as Yellowlegs are only here during the winter, according to my Peterson's--sure felt like summer to me, though). So--are these Willets? And are they ALL Willets?

We also saw a Black Phoebe (lifer!), which I mistook at first to be a Lark Bunting until I realized that (a.) they don't have those here and (b.) he had a white diamond on his belly and (c.) he had a little crest or tuft-looking thingie on his head. We looked through the guide and Matty spotted it: Black Phoebe. Cool! And bigger than I remember the Eastern Phoebes being.

One bird that I saw twice but Matty didn't see was a beautiful buffy one with a long down-turned bill: Long-billed Curlew! (That Mac's guide to coastal CA birds was INVALUABLE today.) While the Black-necked Stilts and (presumed) Willets and (some-sized) Yellowlegs were all rather public in their food searching and preening and general noise-making, the curlew was waaaay back in the taller grass, alone, both times I saw one. It's like he noticed I had the scope on him and hid before Matty could see him. Frustrating. But I got a great look at him! Beautiful.

So that was six lifers for the Oakland trip--I also got two lifers last night, while driving up on Sonoma Mountain (the mountain I see out of my bedroom window):

The first lifer was a Nuttall's Woodpecker, who was noisily tapping at a rather grizzled old oak:

He was about the size of a Hairy Woodpecker, but you can see that his red pattern and the horizontal striping across his back are way different. Sorry the pics aren't better, but it was getting pretty dark at the time. I also got some rather blurry pics (dying battery = autofocus not so focusy) of a beautiful Western Bluebird! and an Oregon-race Dark-Eyed Junco:



I realize the blur makes it almost impossible to see, but just check out that electric blue on the Western Bluebird. Amazing. I heard tons of wild bird songs and calls, but oy vey, I'm just clueless out here!

I did, however, distinctly recognize one rather wild call, that of a Spotted Towhee. It started with a couple of chips, then changed to a long trill, with other chips and noises. Thank to my sister Mary, I now own the Stokes bird song CDs for Western birds too, so I listened over and over and picked out this Spotted Towhee. It was an amazing call, like two or more different birds or something. The chipping and the trilling just didn't go together in my mind, but -- this great singer pulled it off. So, since we've determined that heard birds are lifers -- I will count this on the list. Begrudgingly. I'm not going to feel really good about it until I see the guy. I'm driving back up there tomorrow!

While driving home in the near darkness, I was lucky enough to see a flock of Wild Turkeys--I counted 11 but there could've been more! I LOVE Wild Turkeys, so I pulled off the road, ran about 200 yards, and snapped these hilariously terrible shots:

Perfectly Good

Here's a sculpture in downtown Philly symbolizing struggle.

Cool ceiling in the Masonic Temple, a place that embodies learning, questioning, and skepticism.

Huge monopoly pieces as art - guess you never know when the dominos will fall. I read an obituary on a Mr. John Elson (see Time Magazine 9/21/09). He was a writer and editor for Time and I was struck by a few quotes. " He once said the process of editing was the opposite of jurisprudence. Every writer was guilty until proved innocent."

As I sat on my father's inviting front porch, I read Mr. Elson's advice to writers, " Never let the search for the perfect get in the way of the perfectly good."

But when in doubt, go to the library. The North Wales Library was my retreat, my haven, and a harbor of excellent childhood memories. It's going upscale in 2010 - new digs, new computerization. Good for them, but I'll miss the old card system where I could see my name on the list inside a book. Aah, perfect memories.

Joanne