Peace on Tybee Island

It's never easy to leave home, especially when Bill's also called away, but I have to say it's getting easier for me. Phoebe, at 16, has it all under control. She keeps the house, feeds the animals, whips Liam into line on time, fixes the dinners that I leave for her, drives her  brother where he needs to be. And with her independence and tied-together usefulness goes a freedom I haven't felt in a decade and a half. I can leave. And she's got my back.

So I travel now in a pure way, an unruffled, unworried, joyous way, and it feels divine.

I get to go where camellias are in full mid-winter bloom (Tybee I and Savannah), bringing me back to my childhood in Richmond. Oh, to be able to grow this stunning member of the tea family in Ohio. Don't know if global warming's going to accomplish that for me in my lifetime, but I'm hopeful. ;) Hey, might as well roll with it.

I had loads of fun on this trip, just rolling with and in whatever it gave me. Sometimes the seeming calamities (rescheduling, snow in a usually snowless place) turned out to be huge blessings. I got to shoot pictures of gulls and kids and a dog on the beach. I got to watch snow falling on salt water.

I got personal with ring-billed gulls.

A young redtail (probably born in spring 2012) circled over our car at the Savannah Dredge Spoil, and, asking the driver to stop, I burst out of the car and started clicking. I have learned to take full advantage of close birds in good light.

You beautiful thing. I always talk to birds as I shoot, sounding, I'm sure, like a fashion photographer trying to get the best out of a model.

The young hawk cupped its wings and floated right over, making tight circles over this woman with her camera. Did it know what I wanted, which was to bask in its beauty? It seemed to.

I love this shot, the hawk peeking over the edge of its wing, every bar, every feather edging perfect, perfect. Newly minted.

Oh my goodness.

 

 Did a similar clamber-out-of-the-car maneuver with some turkey vultures. I'm always looking to improve my library of turkey vulture shots. It's my totem bird, after all...I need good pictures of it.

Look at that reflective underwing! Molten pewter.

 One of the best things I saw on this trip was an osprey, at a great distance, plunging into a quiet backwater on Tybee I., Georgia. It came up with something flashing silver in its talons. Got a fish!
To my puzzlement, it circled and circled, bearing the fish. Why wasn't it landing? As I watched, I became more and more curious, and I got the group to focus on it to try to figure out what it was up to. So we're all watching this bird circle heavily with its prey, and we're speculating that maybe it's having trouble carrying it or subduing it. Finally it heads for a large pine. It's going to land.

As we watch, it swings up its feet to make the landing, and a fish flies straight out of its grip and into the woods below! Oh no! It lost its meal!

But then it lands and I get the scope on it and darned if it doesn't still have a fish in its talons! It had made a lucky strike, grabbing a fish in each foot. No wonder it couldn't land!

These things happen. It's embarrassing, but you can't land with a fish in each fist. You have to drop one.

By the time I got these photos (by lucky coincidence, it was perched right over the exit road as we left), he had consumed most of the remaining fish. You can tell it's a male by its almost unmarked breast. I'd never seen an osprey get two fish at once, though I know it happens, and I was so happy we were all watching when this bird had to jettison one of them. You don't see that every day.

I'll leave you with some serenity, the kind you can only get with  sea and shore.

My view on Tybee. I ran on this beach each morning. Those were my favorite times.

Another Tybee sunrise. How divine, to open the blinds and see this.

 A GOS birder takes in the scene off a quiet dock.

And so do I.

Good morning, Marsh. You're smelling a little funky, but I love it. The air is soft and warm on my bare arms. There's Tybee Light in the background.

When you can't tell water from sky, that's a special kind of peace. I wish it for you.

Grateful, that's all, that I get to pull up stakes and go every now and then, and call it work. I don't take a second of it for granted. That trip recharged my batteries, cut a couple of particularly cruel weeks out of my winter. I could get used to Tybee in January. I know I'll go back.


My deepest gratitude to the Georgia Ornithological Society for bringing me down to this piece of heaven for being so warm and gracious; to Coastal Georgia Audubon for taking me up on my offer to speak to them, too, and showing me Jekyll Island; and to the Virginia Beach Winter Wildlife Festival for a fabulous time with birds and beaches in the snow. Y'all go check these places out now, y'hear?

Jekyll Island Interlude

In a new effort to maximize return for the travel I do, I'm trying to book multiple speaking engagements when I go far afield. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I thought I had three engagements lined up in the Savannah area, but one fell through. Still, two was better than one.

Zick on Jekyll. Photo by Lydia Thompson

Coastal Audubon, based in Brunswick, took me up on my offer to speak to their group. President Marge Inness had to throw it together pretty quickly, but she and member Lydia Thompson did a bang-up job publicizing it. 

We had no idea how many might attend. 30? 40? Their previous all-time attendance high had been 42.

Sixty people showed up! One of my favorite sights--people scrambling for extra chairs. We had a blast.

But I should back up. Because before I could go to Brunswick, I wanted to go to Jekyll Island to meet Lydia Thompson, watercolor painter, printmaker, writer, avid birder, blogger.

And before I could do that, I had to cross THIS.

My slight phobia of high arched spans over water emerged in the spring of 1999, when I was just barely pregnant with Liam and headed out to Dauphin Island, Alabama to speak to the Alabama Ornithological Society. There was this concrete bridge and it was very steep and it went up and up such that you could see nothing but sky at the top. My primitive brain kicked in and shrieked, "YOU'LL FALL OFF THE OTHER SIDE THERE'S NO ROAD AHEAD IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT!!!"

and before I knew it I was driving about five miles an hour and slowing fast and cars were honking and swerving around me

and I was making these low animal moans and gripping the wheel very tightly

but I made it over and back, too.

This one wasn't quite as bad.

but I cannot say I am crazy about bridges like this, no matter how beautiful the view. A single Jersey barrier between me and hundreds of feet of fall does not make me feel secure.

This was my second crossing of this span. The first one was worse. I couldn't have taken photos the first time. I was too busy going Hm. Hm. Hm. OK. Hm. OK. 

But I made it to Jekyll and with Lydia as my most excellent guide we took in her favorite sights. Here she is with my chocolate chip Fiat.

It's so lovely to go afield with another artist. We flip out over the same things: patterns on the sand,

the little things the wind and water sculpt

gorgeous dunes

red bay (the kind of leaf you cook with!)

yaupon holly

oyster beds

oystercatchers!!

oystercatcher tracks

sea whips, a kind of coral, most amazing...But for Lydia's guidance, I knew not whether I was looking at animal, vegetable or mineral. And they also come in bright pink!

The great prize of the day: a newly arrived pair of Wilson's plovers resting on their chosen nesting grounds.

They looked tired. Maybe they'd just come from Central America!

We visited a heron roost where yellow-bellied turtles and little alligators were watched over by a yellow-crowned night heron.

It was cool and sunny and beautiful there.

She and the Friends of Jekyll Island had made a gorgeous bird garden that attracts painted buntings in season. I was there out of season, but there were oodles of birds, including a tufted titmouse which is a big deal for an offshore island like this one.

Lydia took me to a rope swing that had been hanging for at least 40 years in a beautiful coastal forest.

Well, of course I did! Watch out for that tree!

two Zick at play photos by Lydia Thompson

but the best thing she did besides taking me to her favorite spot on the whole island was to let me creep up on the oystercatchers and practically put my right ear down on the sand

to snag this image of them standing in their pink nylon stockings all looking up at who knows what. Please to click on the photo to see the whole composition. It is square here, but beaches are not square.

Thank you for my beautiful Jekyll Island afternoon, Miss Lydia!

and thank you Marge and John Inness of Brunswick, GA, for being such wonderful hosts. I would come back in a heartbeat.