An Annual Pilgrimage

Although there are Harlequin Ducks locally, I haven’t managed to sight any this year so after a scheduled lunch fell through we decided Sunday would be a good day to drive to Ft Flagler where I’ve managed to see them every winter for the last seven years. Things looked good when we left as it was one of the sunniest days we’ve had for a while.

Unfortunately, when we reached Ft. Flagler there was an extremely high tide. There were few shorebirds and even fewer Harlequins. The only pair I saw was so far out that I couldn’t recognize them with my bare eyes. Even the 800mm (400mm with a doubler) lens I brought barely reached them.

While this shot would serve to confirm my sighting, they were so far away I couldn’t crop the shot to fill the frame.

After checking a couple of other places to see if we could find some closer, we gave up and decided we might have better luck in Port Townsend after some shopping and lunch when the tide had receded. Despite several off-leash dogs running the beach, we did see a pair of Harlequins closer than we had seen them in the morning.

Though not as good as some I’ve taken in previous years, this shot captures the Harlequin’s beautiful markings and colors that brings me back year after year.

The 800 mm lens combination I was using had such a shallow depth of field that I found it impossible to capture both the male and female in a single shot, so I had to combine shots where I focused on each of them separately to create this portrait.

Though not quite the day I’d hoped for, it was still a delightful day, one I’ll undoubtedly repeat as often in the future as I’m able to.

Old Friends Pass By

Though I still enjoy seeing familiar birds while out birding – as followers of this site are probably painfully aware — the most enjoyment comes when you see a bird for the first time. The next best thing is seeing a bird you don’t see very often.

This duck has fooled me several times over the past years because I don’t see it very often and because it is the female, not the male. Like many female ducks, it’s much less striking than the male Greater Scaup.

I’m always sure I’ve never seen it before when I first sight it. As soon as I get home and identify it in my birding book, though, I remember that I have seen it in the same place in past years. Though not as distinctive as the male, the female Greater Scaup

is distinctive enough that you’re not likely to confuse it with other female ducks who are also primarily brown in color.

Widgeons are so common that I quit taking pictures of them about the same time I quit taking pictures of Mallards. That doesn’t mean that I don’t take pictures of them if they fly by because it’s a much more challenging shot.

Though I haven’t tired of taking shots of Hooded Mergansers, I really like this shot because they usually dive rather than flying away when scared and I don’t have many shots of them flying.

Subtle Shades of Brown

I’ll have to admit that the photographer in me is attracted to sunshine, but, personally, I’ve always preferred subdued, earthy colors to bright colors. In fact, ex-students used to make fun of my many brown corduroy jackets and brown pants because clothing I’ve always favored muted colors in clothing. Perhaps that is because I was raised in the Pacific Northwest where those colors prevail most of the year.

Who could argue that the male Northern Pintail doesn’t look elegant foraging on Belfair’s mudflats

or that the Great Blue Heron’s subtle blues and grays don’t stand out here?

Heck, the male Green-winged Teal looks positively dapper against the muddy banks when sunshine finally penetrates the cloud cover.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Rain”

Although I liked a lot of the poems in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Words Under the Woods, it’s only 157 pages long, so I thought I would just cite one more poem, one that seemed particularly poignant to me after 30 years of teaching and provides ample evidence that William Stafford was right on when he was quoted on the back cover as saying, “In the current literary scene one of the most heartening influences is the work of Naomi Shihab Nye. Her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life.”

Rain

A teacher asked Paul

what he would remember

from third grade, and he sat

a long time before writing

“this year sumbody tutched me

on the sholder”

and turned his paper in.

Later she showed it to me

as an example of her wasted life.

The words he wrote were large
as houses in a landscape.

He wanted to go inside them

and live, he could fill in

the windows of “o” and “d”

and be safe while outside

birds building nests in drainpipes
knew nothing of the coming rain.

I taught high school, not the third grade, but I can still identify with the poem, even if I can’t identify with the teacher who saw Paul’s paper as an “example of her wasted life.” Hopefully, she was the “sumbody” that touched Paul on the shoulder providing him with the feeling that someone cared for him, though she seems too out of touch to have been the one that did that.

As a converted caseworker, it was precisely students like Paul who inspired me to turn to teaching in hopes that I could help people before they ended up on welfare. As it turned out, that was a lot harder to do than I ever imagined, and I failed a lot more than I succeeded in helping them to succeed. While that failure makes it easy to believe that I “wasted” my life trying to help students like Paul succeed, there are more important things than “book learning.” The most important thing you can do as a teacher is to make students feel good about themselves, no matter what skills they may or may not have.

Having been a caseworker and been married to a caseworker for 17 years, I was always aware that some of my students lived unimaginably hard lives, ranging from abuse to neglect, never knowing what was coming next in their lives. Before they can move on they need to feel safe, not like “birds building nests in drainpipes.”