DST: The Swimsuit Edition

This past week, things at work were blissfully slow and the weather was July-warm. I threw a swimsuit on over my snow-white body and hit the beach road. Turns out I wasn't the only one with this bright idea. Just goes to show you that New Englanders know how to make the best of any situation. Who knows? It could be March-cold come July.

These are my (mostly) swimsuit interpretations for this week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday challenge.

WHIMSY: Curious George Goes to the Beach. In New Hampshire. In March.

CREATE: It wasn't the hole they're digging, rather the memories they're creating that struck me.
{No, I've never seen a garden hoe at the beach either.}

SEED: My read on this look? He's just had a thought that's likely to grow into something mischievous.

SWING/DROP: The water drops cascading from his fingers starkly contrast with his ferocious shovel-swinging.

I couldn't leave out his follow-through, slam'n'dunk, and his frighteningly triumphant look.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So much uncontained joy . . .

. . . and her—the one who seems torn between the group and what lies beyond.

Yeah, I just wanted to take her home for awhile. I'd have given her back. Honest.

It's all just life . . .

With love and thanks to her mom for allowing me the privilege of being a part of their last day together.

More Scavenger Hunt Sunday Fun

Here are my interpretations for this week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday weekly photo challenge.

VINTAGE: An old garden fork that belonged to my grandparents.

QUOTE: For over 30 years whenever I've moved, this is the first thing I've hung on the wall.

NATURE'S OWN: Thanks to Ecobirder I was able to quickly identify this as a Cooper's Hawk.

PEOPLE: Right after the starter's call at the Celebrate Pink 5K road race.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S CHOICE: A Downy Woodpecker buzzed by this afternoon in time to be included.

Sometimes I get to thinking . . .

When the days turn warmer and the sun streaks stronger my world revolves around color. Lush shades of green and early blooming yellows, purples, and whites that look nothing at all like snow.

Birds call out setting their territories and bees arrive and then it's all about the collision of light and color and movement and the ballet unfolds and I can barely breathe because it's like the earth woke up and I have a front row seat and for moments I know there isn't an afterlife: it's all right here—heaven and hell—and surely this is the heavenly part I want to last forever.

And the clouds roll in and the flowers stay tightly wound unwilling to open until the sun comes back and this week it didn't and I find myself wondering if this is what purgatory would be like if I believed it existed.

Broad-Winged Hawk?

This past week we had a day without rain. One glorious day with sunshine and temperatures in the stratosphere—we're talking 70°F baby. In March. BOOYAH!

While working in the back gardens I heard a bird's cry from the front. I grabbed my camera and ran. The sun was filtering in from the west and the bird was sitting high in the tree to the south. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 feet high. Usually a 200mm lens is good enough to get a clear shot but what with the glare and the distance and the surety that this big guy was ready to fly, I just shot until he flew away about a minute later.

All of the photos looked a whole lot like this.

I photograph birds because I like them. Same goes for flowers, plants, and other critters. I also like to zoom way in using editing software to see details. Not to publish, just to glimpse the beauty that I can't see with my naked eye. This? This was work. I can't begin to tell you how much I had to do to see much of anything. The finished products aren't much to look at, but they gave me a starting point to try to identify this hawk-like bird. My best guess is it's a broad-winged hawk.

Okay, you birders out there: what say ye?

As much as I enjoy the fun of attempting to correctly identify a bird I haven't seen before, I really love the little birds like this dark-eyed or slate gray junco that are part of the everyday fabric of my backyard tapestry.

Some days I wish I'd never seen "The Birds"

At 5 I was watching Creature Double Feature, The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. When AHP went off the air, I was allowed to watch The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I was completely unfazed by the over-the-top images flickering on the tiny black and white television. I knew that it was all fake and no one really got hurt or went crazy. I knew none of it happened in the real world because nothing looked remotely like my home town or any other place I'd ever been.

By the time The Birds was first shown on network television in 1968, I was far less sanguine about horror shows. But this was a movie by Alfred Hitchcock and I'd been watching his schmaltz or reading the collections of short stories published in The AH Mystery Magazine for most of my young life. I remember staring, transfixed, as Tippi Hedren was terrorized by flock after flock of small birds—all in living color. I saw that movie once but the memories are as fresh today as they were back then.

Coming home from work last week with the windows down just enough to let in the early Spring air, I heard what sounded like the sharp, piercing cheeps of peepers. Even though I was traveling on a byway, I knew I wasn't close to any wetlands. As the volume increased, I realized the sound was not burbling up to me, rather raining down on me.

I looked up and damn near drove off the narrow road.

Everywhere I looked there were birds, settling briefly in tree tops then suddenly taking flight one after another after another and hundreds of flocking birds flew from the bushes on the north side of the road to the taller trees to the south.

Since they were flying with intensity and a purposefulness only they understood, I doubted they'd start dive-bombing me. I grabbed my camera and started shooting. The camera's long lens doesn't begin to give an accurate portrait of their insane numbers. Watching them dip and weave in synchronicity was fascinating but the cacophony of their cheeping calls surrounding me finally sent me running for the quiet of my car.

A photo I published last week was one of the few I took down the road a bit where it was quieter—only a handful of birds sat on tree branches. I had no idea what they were since it was dusk on a cloudy day but several folks recognized their distinctive silhouette and identified them as starlings. I've never liked them much. I'm pretty sure they're the birds that pecked people's eyes out in the movie.

World Bird Wednesday

I loaded these at a very high pixel count. Click any one of them to enlarge it to ginormous. It'll give you a glimpse of just how freaky it was out there.

Stopping for a Spell

It's a good sign that Spring is near when the birds that overwinter here become more active. An even stronger indication that we're nearing Winter's end is when the *flocking birds start hanging out in trees, on power lines, and pretty much anydamnwhere they want to.

It ain't always pretty.

*This word choice is not accidental. I hope to be able to publish that post next week.

I was going to write a post about why I don't write anymore . . .

. . . when I realized even I couldn't handle that kind of angst on a Friday. Thursday we had a wildly unseasonably high temperature of 69°F. The snow? She is quite gone.

Nestled underneath her cold mantle these were aching for this sunshiny day.

Nature is magical.

That case of the blues that's been building for the past few months?

It's as gone as the snow.

Just. Like. That.

Springy

The local meteorologists started calling this a "fake winter" due to a nearly complete lack of snow, frigid temperatures, and ice. Me? I've called it a well-deserved reprieve after last year's brutality.

Two days after I shot this, March roared in like her lioness self. My guess is her show of power was merely a reminder that whatever this season is, it isn't over yet.