Coot Ballet

You never know when nature will present you with something amazing. Sometimes it's hidden in the seemingly mundane.  On Saturday, January 19, a group of us carpooled to Back Bay NWR near Norfolk, Virginia, for a field trip for The Virginia Beach Winter Wildlife Festival. 

Now, though I grew up in Richmond, I had never come back to Virginia on a real live birding field trip. Odd but true. I never realized people other than me went out looking for birds--together--until I went to college. I was thunderstruck that there was such a thing as social birdwatching. And I took to it like a coot to water.

gotta love this hat!

So we're tooling around the frozen impoundments at Back Bay with a freezing wind whipping through the open tram in which we're riding. I'm sitting next to my new friend Susan and her sister Annie and we're having a grand old time sharing an afghan. I'm shooting out the side of the tram.

Ring-necked duck and hen bufflehead take to the air.

A hen ruddy duck does, too. Her reflection is sharper than she is!

The famed tundra swans of Back Bay are consorting with a drift of snow geese, quite some ways away. The geese are in the foreground, but all the long straight necks you're seeing are swans.

Everywhere, we could hear the mellow hooting of the swans above the gabble of snow geese.
That beautiful sound took me right back to my first visit to Minneapolis when I was twelve years old, the first time I heard it. Skeins were going over downtown. I looked up when I heard their calls and there they were, the first wild swans I'd ever seen. I lit out down the crowded sidewalk, grabbing people's arms and pointing up. "Swans! Wild swans!! LOOK!!"

That was surely an epiphany for me. Not just seeing the swans, but finding myself absolutely compelled to get others to see and appreciate them, too.

Still at it, as you see. 

A rather forlorn sight: a flock of white ibis moping in snowy branches. I think they're rushing their push northward. There weren't any white ibis in coastal Virginia when I was a kid! You poor things should be in Florida or Georgia. Somewhere warmer than 20 degrees.

Find the forest fairy in this photo.
Might need to click on it to get a larger version.

but about that amazing thing I mentioned...

We're tooling along and there's a big flock of coots in a roadside ditch that somehow has remained open through the deep freeze. There were the usual disparaging remarks about the ordinariness of coots. But I was on fire. I like coots and I especially like coots in motion. These ungainly aquatic rails with their petal-lobed toes do a lot for me. Especially when they run.

As the coots pattered over the water and ice, I spotted a pied-billed grebe amongst them. "Grebe in flight! Grebe in flight!" I hissed to the group. Because you just do not get to see pied-billed grebes fly. Ever.
He's at the back, center. Look at that. Not to mention the fabulous thundering herd of coots.

My parting shot--grebe ballet. 

O beautiful.

My sincere thanks to the Virginia Beach Winter Wildlife Festival for having me down. I had a blast from start to finish. Check it out next January. Terrific people, great birding, all kinds of fun. Do it!

Bird Photography on the Strip

There are some really big things in Texas. As you get nearer to South Padre Island and the beach, they get bigger and bigger. Seashells. Dinosaurs. Menacing gorillas. Volcanoes. That kind of thing.

For whatever reason, perhaps Freddie's '80's 'do, this water tower cracks me up. It's big, too.

We were after much smaller things. Like this leetle pied-billed grebe who was floating around preening hisself just off the South Padre Island Convention Center boardwalk.

He's fluffling himself, and the vibrations spread as if he were a tuning fork. I don't really understand how grebe plumage can be at once so fluffy and waterproof. I think it has to do with sleeking down, and abundant oil in the feathers. Really, though, they look like feather dusters, and you wouldn't dunk one of those in the water and expect it to float. Just another mystery to leave unsolved.

I had a pied-billed grebe in my hand who had hit a powerline years ago. He weighed a full pound. I was amazed at the density and heft for his size. Ballast for dives, I guess. They're powerful birds, who migrate at night on tiny narrow wings. So much we don't know or appreciate about grebes. They are extremely cool birds.

There were so many wonderful things hidden in the reeds that walking the marvelous boardwalks was like being in a Highlights for Children double-page spread. Oh look. An American bittern!

who sleeked down when he saw a small fish.

Most of the dabbling ducks were in eclipse plumage in early November, but this drake American wigeon was impressing his mate with fully  molted raiment. He's ready to display.

And in flight. What a gorgeous sight. Oh, I would love to spread that wing and feel that velvet green speculum.

Ahh, crap. You're poopin' up my flight shot, Mr. Wigeon. Spoiled anyway by the hotel behind. This photo does convey the sharp contrast of wild and insanely built-up that is South Padre. Or any beach area, for that matter. Sigh. I see the wildlife crampacked into the tiny refuges and wonder what it must've been like before the giant hotels and condos and restaurants and tattoo parlors and beach towel/sunglasses stores crowded it all into pockets. Beaches. I love 'em. But coastal areas swiftly drive me nuts, because the balance is usually tilted toward all those giant things, and the throngs and their dopey thongs. Poo on that. We should leave more room for wildlife. Tear some of those buildings down and bring the marsh back where it once was and ought still to be.

Having vented, I'm deeply grateful for what remains around the Convention Center and the World Birding Center. I guess I'm just greedy for what used to and ought to be here. And will never understand how a row of sunglasses stores could have taken precedence over a vital breathing living nursery for fish, crustaceans, invertebrates, and birds. How many damn beach towel stores does one town need? In my mind I'd love to be a sort of Carrie Nation for beach development, busting in and swinging my ax around, riding a bulldozer in my big long flouncy dress.

 The pintails were looking a bit shabby by contrast to the wigeon, if such a graceful greyhound can ever look shabby.

The challenge as a photographer is to get the birds framed up in those golden moments before they fly across the facade of the hotel, the marina, the electrical tower. Bill of the Birds took these two roseate spoonbill shots. I forget why he had my camera in his hands but he responded beautifully to GIT 'IM GIT 'IM GIT 'IM which is what I hissed when the spoonbill took off.

 Ahhh. There you are. A million miles, visually, from Big Johnson's Bar. And just a couple of wingstrokes away.