A Least Tern, alone:
One non-breeding Least Tern, looking upward, safely amid her kind:
Least Terns with two Laughing Gulls and a Black Skimmer's flyover:
A Ruddy Turnstone in front of a first winter Ring-billed Gull:
A Ruddy Turnstone in front of an adult Ring-billed Gull:
Size comparisons; just one of Mother Nature's many types of diversity.
Kind of like we humans: we come in all sizes and shapes. If only we could just all get along.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Picture, Perfect, February
This 2015 February is making a lot of national
news.
The serious: the
northeastern U.S. is getting a rash of cold and snow and ice that is taking
lives, causing misery, and destroying private and public property.
The serious with a funny twist: the “viral” video of our President trying his
darndest to pronounce February and remind young and old (but mostly the young)
that the Affordable Care Act sign-up deadline has a February date attached to
it.
And for me? I
repeat myself; gladly: February is this
Gulf Coastie’s favorite month of the year.
If you’d been in my neck of the woods yesterday,
walking beside me, along the trails of Brazos Bend State Park, you too could have celebrated a picture-perfect February day. Full-ball sun with
temperatures in the 60’s and some over-fifty bird species spotted in two hours.
Today? Repeat of
yesterday. And so I thought I’d share a few photos from a last-week trip to the Texas City Dike. I kind of think that the photos say it all:
Picture, Perfect, February!
(Please "click-on" photos for full-screen viewing of the pictures)
This Brown Pelican, in perfect winter sunshine, is beginning to show beautiful springtime plumage:
I never grow tired of watching a day-in-the-life of Laughing Gulls. Ah, but when they drink from the pool of living water, I feel as if I'm watching a holy moment:
Is that Long-billed Curlew popping out of green snow? No, just the common green clover of a February Texas-Gulf-Coast day:
Here's to celebrating a Picture, Perfect, February Day!
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Incognito and Out of Sorts
My fore-mothers were big on “If you have nothing good to
say, say nothing at all.”
Holding my tongue has, at times, served me well; and speaking
my mind has regretfully not. But truth
be told, there have also been times when my silence has mistakenly supported some
miscommunication, or bad behavior on the part of we humans, and I’ve deeply
regretted not voicing myself.
But speaking my mind these days would find me mostly talking
to myself. I’ve felt so terribly
incognito and out of sorts that I don’t look or feel myself:
I’ve traveled a bit these last few weeks to some lovely
state parks: South Llano River,
Palmetto, Huntsville and places in between.
I’ve walked and birded and tried to turn my sights on Mother
Nature, looking for the good:
And then I’d have more RV issues. And here comes my
not-so-proud-of-myself admission: I’m
find solo travels in this RV to be so very difficult.
I’ve felt torn and tattered with fighting my RV’s
unpredictable issues.
And then I’d experience the kindness of a stranger;
someone camping that would note my predicament and offer help. Or someone that would gladly offer aid when I’d
knock on their RV door, or approach their campsite with an embarrassed or
emotional voice, in need of help.
Without the help of these others that I do not know, I’d
have been stranded at Palmetto, unable to release a bound-up parking brake. Thanks to Fifth-Wheel Man, who responded to
my knock on his and his wife’s trailer door, a wee bit early one cold morning.
Fifth-wheel Man listened to my plight; listened to my
quaking voice as I read the less-than-useful information from the owner’s
manual. It was an uncomfortable situation
for me, asking someone I did not know to sit in my driver’s seat.
I watched and listened and spoke as he attempted, with
large-man strength, to exercise the lifeless parking brake handle. He pushed in the button and raised and
lowered, as exactly described by the manual. The brake would not release; the handle would
just “flop down” with no use.
Fifth-wheel Man and I reached the point of believing I
would require a tow—and then one last extreme effort—and the brake released! We both let out a loud YEA!—and I embarrassedly
had a release of water from my eyes, knowing that this kind man had just freed
me to again take flight.
Thanks to camper-strangers Mike and Terri for Mike’s
crawling under the RV with me to gain me courage to study the LP tank plumbing. We two strangers, with only lower legs and feet visible, crawled under the RV to find a likely valve, and to discuss the safety of a “lefty loosey” maneuver of it. Lefty loosey we did, and I now have LP furnace
capability! (Special thanks to Terri for
being on the ready if she heard a loud explosion!)
And thanks to Don for providing the hand-strength to
disconnect my leaking “quick-connect” hose fittings. My lack of hand strength is one of several
items I’d like to address with Mother Nature regarding Her design of we women-folk.
Everything that came so easy in the Airstream seems so
difficult in the Winnebago. Everything
that I once loved about family and community, I now so hate, traveling my one life,
solo.
And so I’ve returned to my stick house with some
difficult decisions to make. Much of the
RV brokenness is repairable; but its body-jarring ride is not. A local Mercedes dealership, specializing in
the Sprinter chassis, confirmed that “constraint”. And as of eleven years ago,
my body’s brokenness cannot function with such a harsh ride, without furthering
serious damage.
And so I’m at a loss for what happens next. Feeling out of sorts is an understatement for
seeking a reinvention of my purpose and goals.
But I give thanks to those unknown camper-folk whose
actions made me not feel incognito. They
saw; they heard; they helped. Actions
speak so much louder than words.
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