February 6: Supplication

Wan sunlight,
bare branches reach upward,
sap stilled, buds tight.

February 5: Downtown eagle

I was in the middle of the crosswalk in downtown Camden's busiest intersection this morning when an adult Bald Eagle soared overhead, white head and tail shining in the sun. I gestured to the driver of the car stopped for me, urging her to look up, and she saw it too. The sighting was even more fun for being shared with a stranger.

Later, at the office, two eagles flew downriver right past our windows. An eagle kind of day.

Eagle flying over Main Street--
sometimes I think
my town is a movie set.

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.