Tag Archives: images of birds

Common Feathered Friends

Click on photos to enlarge.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Birds

Circling Closer: The Magnificent Frigate Bird

When the pelicans stayed away for the past few weeks, the frigate birds were out in full force. Usually, it seems to me that these birds soar high above, swooping down only to steal other birds’ prizes, but two days ago, when the pelicans and fish came back as well, they appeared by the dozens, swooping down on the beach to claim bait left on the beach after the fishermen cleared their nets. It was an amazing display. Here are some of the hundreds of  photos that I took of them that capture their numbers and antics to a small degree. Please click on the first photo and then the right arrows to proceed through the enlarged photos and to read the captions that tell the story of their visit to civilization:

Circling Closer:

 

The Magnificent Frigate Bird

They polonaise up higher,
far above the rest.
Not once dipping to the land.
Do they ever nest?

I never see them fishing,
foraging or chewing.
As though their wings are made for art
but are not made for doing.

A gentle crease within their wings
looks folded and unfolded,
but keeps its shape no matter what,
as though it has been molded.

This rhyme is not so fragile
nor so graceful as these birds.
I guess such elegance as theirs
cannot be caught in words.

 

(I wrote this poem a few years ago and published it in a series of poems about La Manzanilla. It seemed appropriate to publish it again with these photos.)

Trilling

Click on any photo to enlarge all.  jdbphotos

Trilling 

Don’t you hear the mockingbird
trilling out the whole absurd
story of the passing year,
giving voice to shock and fear?

Listen to the mourning dove,
warning us from far above,
the starlings, wrens and birds of prey.
Our debts all nature has to pay.

How can it be that those in power
sit and ponder and yet cower,
too intent on their own needs
to enact necessary deeds

to bring a tyrant fool to task—
to do what all the sane men ask?
Shame on these godly well-heeled men
who fold their hands and say amen,

but let sick children go untreated,
tenements to go unheated,
our waterways to be polluted,
laws and edicts instituted

that benefit the filthy rich
to raise themselves another niche

while milling masses unenlightened
vote heedless as their belts are tightened,

favoring the autocrats
in fear of what the democrats
“might” do, when all around them all
democracy proceeds to fall.

Hear  her there, up on the limb,
surveying all who follow him?
Simple nature mocking us?
Laughing at our furious fuss?

Perhaps more knowing than we know
when raging fires and piles of snow
assault us, it is nature’s way
to lead us and to have its say.

We cannot think of only our
needs and exercise our power
for special interests without paying.
This is what all of nature’s saying.

Mudslides, hurricanes and drought
may show us what it’s all about.
Balance, sanity and sharing
fairness, ecology and caring

will bring about a world that’s lasting
beyond our legislature’s casting.
God-fearing men, do you care
about how your children fare?

And as those whom we’ve elected,
oh so naïvely selected
pad their pockets and close their eyes,
our world around us swiftly dies.

Those are the truths clearly absurd
told to us by the mockingbird.
He sits above on swaying limb.
Why are the masses deaf to him?

The prompt today is trill.

Boat Ride through the Mangroves

Yesterday my friends Lach, Becky and I took a late afternoon boat ride through the beautiful mangrove forest ecological preserve in La Manzanilla, Mexico to view dozens of bird species as well as the iguanas and crocodiles. ( Click on any photo to enlarge them all:)

This certainly qualified as entertainment!

The Magical Kingdom of Candelabra Island

When we sailed through the colossal bifucated stone split into the secret cove on Candelabra Island in Peru, we could not help but feel like we were intruders in this little paradise filled with thousands of cormorants, blue-footed boobies, pelicans, seals, crabs, terns, seagulls, pelicans and other huge flocks of birds that settled on the jagged rocks around the quayside structure where tons of bird guano was loaded up and sold to a lucrative market every 5 years. The birds, however, watched seemingly unperturbed from their vantage point high above on the jagged rocks. (The italicized words are the prompt words we were given to choose between.  This photo series seems to demonstrate them all.)

Cllick on first photo to enlarge all.

 

 

https://bopaula.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/thursdays-special-pick-a-word-in-september-y2/

Mr. Blue and Friends: Tuesday Photo Challenge-Blue

Click on any photo to enlarge all:

 

For: https://dutchgoesthephoto.net/2017/08/29/tuesday-photo-challenge-blue-2/

Bad Photos of Mama and Papa Wren

I was finally was able to capture these photos of papa..but no time to focus.  Can you see the jet that just happened to stream by as I was snapping the one shot? Sorry about the poor photos, but I’m hoping someone will tell me if I’m right in identifying them as wrens:

(Click any photo to enlarge all.)

 

To read the poem “Kitchen Nativity” about this bird, his mate and nestlings, go HERE.

Kitchen Nativity

Version 2jdbphoto                                

Kitchen Nativity

I crept into my kitchen to see
what caused this morning’s cacophony.
The high corner of the cupboard wall
seemed to be the source of all
the peepings and it’s then I guessed
a mother bird had made a nest
there above the kitchen ceiling,
where I thought the paint was peeling.
Instead, that white spilled down the wall
outside the kitchen is not at all
what I thought—salitre’s heavings,
but is instead the nestlings’ leavings.

The watching mother stays aloof
on the next-door neighbor’s roof
with mouth filled with a juicy grub.
Now she flies from roof to shrub,
objecting to my presence there,
so close to nestlings in her care.
And so I leave the bird’s domain,
lest nestlings’ voices be raised in vain.
Minutes later, all is still,
although I know ten minutes will
bring more protests from tiny beaks
for wormy treats that mama seeks.
So it is this year again
that Mother Nature invites guests in.
My house now shelters more than me—
my family stretched from “I” to “we.”

Sideways glance: For Cee’s View from the Side Challenge

Click on first photo to see a larger view of all photos.

For Cee’s View from the Side Challenge

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Isolated Subjects

This single post sticking up far from the shore of Lake Chapala is the epitomy of isolation, but as I zoomed in on it, I learned more of its story.

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It is in fact a handy perch for this solitary night heron.

Cee’s prompt was “Isolated Subjects.”