February 4: White goose

My husband and I got up early this morning in order to hit the Rockland breakwater before work--in hopes of seeing a Ross's Goose that has been hanging out there at lower tides amid a flock of Canada Geese. This goose is very similar to the Snow Goose that sometimes passes through this area in late fall/winter, only about half the size. It breeds in the Arctic and usually winters near the Gulf Coast, so this errant bird was a bit off course. We'd never seen one before.

Fortunately when we scanned the water just offshore at the breakwater "beach" this morning, this little white goose was easy to pick out of the crowd, even though all the geese were sleeping. Since we both had to rush off to work, we worried that our only view of this life bird might be as a floating white blob with its head under its wing. But just as we were getting ready to walk back to our cars, it woke up and then briefly stood up out of the water atop a rock, as if to show itself off to us before shortly thereafter drifting back to sleep on the water. Apparently the flock is a drowsy one that early in the morning.

Although not so drowsy that when I returned to my car and then decided five minutes later to go back to the beach with my camera and try to get a photo, I found that the entire flock of about 70 geese had disappeared. Only a spanse of exposed rocks remained. The flock, I found, had shifted to an inlet on other side of the breakwater, and most of the birds were back asleep.

Drifting offshore,
does the sleeping white goose
dream of ice floes?

Can you pick out the little white Ross's Goose?

February 3: Not seeing

Spent a good part of this morning in the toasty warmth of a house with big windows that look out onto an impressive array of bird feeders. We were there in hopes of seeing a Hoary Redpoll among a flock of Common Redpolls. This big, pale, arctic finch is an infrequent visitor to the coast of Maine, and would have been a life bird for my husband and me. But when we arrived, we heard those painfully familiar words, "It's been here all morning. It was here five minutes ago!" Needless to say, we didn't see the Hoary Redpoll.

We did, however, enjoy these things, which more than made up for not seeing it:

• prior to redpoll quest--breakfast with friends over which we dawdled happily, perhaps leading to us "just missing" the Hoary;
• several close views of Common Redpolls, a pretty bird that I don't get many chances to observe closely; 
• watching "Nature" on PBS on a huge, high def TV in the long breaks between flock visitations;
• friendly hosts who didn't mind having three people they barely knew sprawled on their living room floor all morning; and 
• a chance to eat pizza for lunch at The Old Goat in Richmond. 

Sometimes not seeing the bird

brings other things

into closer focus. 

February 2: Setting moon

Again, woke up much too early, but at least had the pleasure of watching the waning moon (last quarter) setting behind the neighbor's spruce trees, and, as the sky lightened, chickadees making their first darting run through those trees to the feeders.

Even as the sky lightens
setting moon remains bright,
night carried into day.

February 1: Red stars

Last night as I walked to the corner market, the night sky was crystal clear, and I could actually stop and enjoy the spectacle of stars without instantly freezing solid. Directly overhead, the planet Jupiter shone bright, poised above Aldebaran, a red giant star in the V-shaped constellation Taurus. Below Aldebaran, the red giant Betelgeuse hung on the right shoulder (our left) of the constellation Orion the Hunter. Amazing to think that the largest planet in our solar system (which is also red), and these two red giants flaming thousands of times larger than our own little yellow sun, are just tiny pinpricks from our vantage point here on Earth. We comprehend so little of what's around us in the universe.

Starry winter sky.
I made a big red wish
on Aldebaran.

January 31: Roar

This morning I awoke to a roar outside that made me think for a brief instant that I was back in my usual bedroom on Monhegan hearing the sound of the surf pounding the island's rocky shore. Instead, gale force winds and driving rain engulfed the house with a loud, malevolent energy, flinging branches. Lights flickered. The river, wild with storm water, added its own white noise to the scene.

A co-worker's child told him the trees blowing outside their house this morning looked like "angry hair."

A few hours later, however, all is calm. Big patches of blue sky shine behind breaking clouds. The trees barely stir, and the temperature is almost the same outside as it is in. Ah, the vagaries of the weather in New England.

Roar of the sea familiar
outside my bedroom window.
I wish I were back there.

January 30: Budding

So strangely warm today that the crusty snow was sublimating into puffs of mist that drifted across the road like ghostly tumbleweeds. A dense fog settled over the dripping trees. Not a great day to be outside. But inside, our amaryllis slowly opens into slightly erotic hot-red buds, twin points of brightness.

Foggy evening.
Bright amaryllis buds
stretch toward the window.

January 29: Micro-moments

I read this at Atlantic.com today:

"In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.
Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.
Rather, it is what she calls a 'micro-moment of positivity resonance.' She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in 'It's a Wonderful World' when he sang, 'I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"

You can read the whole article here. I'm not sure I agree with the overall premise of the piece--especially as I see further down my Facebook stream a photo of a couple I know who were childhood sweethearts and still going strong, celebrating their 47th anniversary today. But the concept of a "micro-moment of positivity resonance" struck me as a real experience, akin to the moment that often inspires haiku--that ephemeral burst of perception and mood the poem tries to capture. So as I look back on my day, I'm trying to think of a moment when I felt something like this "micro-moment of positivity resonance." This is what I came up with.

Back to work after a sick day.

A co-worker tells me

he missed me. 

January 28: Two goldfinches

Home sick today I spent almost the entire time on the couch, reading and napping with the cat stretched out alongside me. When I first got up, I had the good fortune to catch sight of an eagle flying upriver, white tail flared like a flag. It paused in the backyard until chased off by crows. That drama past, the rest of my day was occasionally brightened by the appearance of two goldfinches at the window feeder, taking their time each visit to chow down on the black oil sunflower seed.

Two finches feeding,

unaware of the impact

of their presence.

Posted with Blogsy

January 27: A little heat

After a weekend spent largely outside--shorefront birding and protesting on the streets of Portland yesterday and birding some more on wind-swept Scarborough Marsh this morning--I arrived home tonight feeling permanently chilled to the bone, muscles sore from being tensed for so long against the cold. Flannel pajamas and a heavy sweater are helping to finally warm my core, but the best moment of the evening so far has been washing some dishes, immersing my hands in that hot, soapy water. Perhaps a bath will follow dinner.

Washing dishes,
rough hands in hot water,
I sigh deeply.

January 26: Roadside hawks

With the hard crusty snow making it a challenge for birds of prey to hunt for rodents, more hawks and owls are visible perched in trees along road edges, watching for birds and rodents to emerge on the open edges. As I drove to Portland yesterday to join the tar sands oil pipeline protest, I counted two perched red-tails and one in flight being harassed by crows. On the way back north later that afternoon, I first saw two red-tails together in one tree, then a Bald Eagle flew over the road behind a flock of ducks, and then two more perched red-tails.

 

Fields of frozen snow.

As I speed past, hungry hawks

eye the roadside.

Posted with Blogsy

January 25: Duck wing

We were gathered at the window observing robins and waxwings foraging in the berry bushes down by the river, excited to see signs of life and color on this bone-chillingly cold day. Groups of black ducks flew upriver as we watched, moving quickly in small flocks of four or five--dark ducks with pale wing linings. We kept expecting to see an eagle at some point following behind--the reason for their flight--but we never did. I happened to be following one duck with my binoculars when the light caught the speculum--that patch of color--on its wing: such an indescribable, vivid blue-green. A millisecond later the color disappeared with a wingbeat as the duck flew on.

Fast-flying duck flashes
a breath-taking green.
Don't get attached to things.