A Woman, A Plan, A Sanderling

A coldish day on the beach at Tybee Island, Georgia. We're on a Georgia Ornithological Society field trip to the Tybee Lighthouse jetty, where we've heard there may be purple sandpipers. 

But there's a bird I need to speak with first. A sanderling in winter plumage is dancing over the algae-coated rocks, against a backdrop of Atlantic. And I cannot tear myself away.

This is the beauty of bird photography. A bird close by, in perfect light, is a banquet of delights for a photographer. It doesn't matter what the bird is, though a sanderling is certainly a lovely bird.

My universe suddenly contracts down like a lens onto that bird, those colors, this moment.

And I become one with him, looking for his changing mood, his next move.

He could be a giant Rok on a tree-grown mountainside, stomping the forest with elephantine feet.

Or a very small sandpiper against a very large ocean, 

where container ships the length of three New York City blocks thrum by, loaded with cars and appliances and who knows what all.

Or he could be a winter sanderling, skittering by us at arm's length. Gotta love a bird who will do that.

 The rare ones will wait. This one's putting on a show.

Discovering Savannah

There's never enough time to explore. I had a day and a half to myself to discover Savannah. I parked my little chocolate chip Fiat and set out on foot to see what I could see, quickly realizing it was much bigger than I'd thought. 

On the advice of a friend I made my way toward the riverfront, where ancient warehouses and shops had been made into restaurants, bars, candy stores and more shops. I bought myself some odd garments from Nepal at half price. If you want to know what Zickstyle is, this is it. Talbots material I am not. I suspect that twenty years hence I will still be wearing odd gaudy hand-pieced things, and still not caring whether anyone thinks it's age-appropriate. 

Litmus test: Walked into an Apple store upon returning to Columbus. Twenty-something "Genius" helping me stops, stares, says, "If I may say so, that hoodie you're wearing is AWESOME."

Well, all right. Thank you. That vote counts.

I lost myself in an antique mall and bought two busted up old ceramic toads. Unfortunately I somehow lost one of them. My bag was unzipped when it came out of planeside gate check, and the smaller one had fallen or been taken out. Thanks again, TSA. You suck out loud. Now you've lost or stolen a hand-made pennywhistle and a little ceramic toad I treasured. But I still have the big one, busted toes and all.

The antiques mall.  Yes, I was having loads of fun.

A late lunch at Crystal Beer Parlor. Crab stew and a Greek salad. Mmmm.

While we're on food, one of the best meals I had: snow crab and shrimp with grits and Cajun cream sauce at AJ's Dockside on Tybee Is. GA. Ohhhh my gawwwd. I ate nothing but crustacean for ten days and lived to tell about it. I was like Tom Hanks in Castaway, except that I was loving it. And didn't have an abscessed tooth I had to knock out by moonlight with a rock. Or only a soccer ball to talk to. 

Hit an art gallery and took an illicit photo of a superb folk-art osprey. I wanted it, but didn't have $1500 extra to spare. Look at that glare. Love it. He had lots of other water birds, all superb, all made by listening to the woodgrain. So good.

I walked downtown to one of the zillion parks and found a human-dog party of epic proportions.

 The dogs were milling around, and an old arthritic black Lab (yes, Floridacracker, this is for you...) was galumphing painfully around the outside of the pack, smiling at everyone.

Tons of butt-sniffing going on amongst the dogs.

I marveled that nobody was gettin' up in anybody's grille. Reminded myself that these were city dogs, used to socializing, unlike my country Boston terrier. He'd have been lining them up, taking names and kicking butt. Chet. You are such a heathen.

A beautiful pale boy was reading.

He got up, yawned and stretched, not knowing that I was admiring his long ivory arms through my telephoto lens. Sorry. No asking your name, not offering a release for you to sign. Just stealing a little  of your beauty.

More dog action. This pitbull mix was so adorable. Love that expressive tail!

The statues don't mind my taking their picture.

This city, this city. Why can't Ohio have just a smidge of its beauty?

It probably has something to do with our foul climate. Nobody has time to create beautiful public spaces. We're too busy surviving our disgusting winters.

No such problems here. It was 65 this day. Everybody was hangin' out in the park.

His guitar was well worn around the soundhole.

There's that swaying Spanish moss again. Ohhh.

An untimely bloom from a star magnolia. The people I spoke with said the end of January was a wee bit early for this to be blooming. That's OK. I'll take it. Oh, I'll take it.

A sweet presage of spring. Mmmm. More more more said the Zick.

I want to go back. Preferably arm in arm with someone I love, to stroll slowly down Savannah's myriad avenues. It's a  dreamscape for dreams like that.

Snow, Kids, and Gulls on the Beach

Becalmed in Virginia Beach, happily so in a fifth-floor oceanview suite. They treated me right. The Virginia Beach Wildlife Festival organizers were so solicitous, so concerned for my welfare…but I told them that stranded without a car in a beach hotel in winter for a few days is actually my idea of fab. I could walk to restaurants; I could run on the boardwalk; I could work in my room and I could watch the waves and the birds and dolphins. Besides, Katie Whanger, the festival organizer with the mostest, had given me a bottle of Williamsburg-grown red wine. Life was good.

The ocean was like a dry-erase board. Someone was always writing something new there. I could hardly look away. The water was usually some shade of pastel or pale, and any perturbation, such as a fin breaking the surface or a merganser floating, appeared as a dark mark on the pale ground. I set up my scope and panned constantly.

One morning, nine bottlenose dolphins fished back and forth across my field of view for most of an hour. I trained the scope on them, becoming accustomed to their pace and rhythm and anticipating where they’d surface again. They were swimming in synchrony. When seven surfaced to blow at once, it was a thrill to have them in the scope, to see their kind, tired eyes and fixed smiles. What a miraculous thing, to see dolphins in a freezing sea. I gave up trying to photograph them and just abandoned myself to the watching.

Dolphin and calf roll

through sun's path, curved fins cogteeth

pulling my heart under

The weather deteriorated. It snowed. For the first time in my life I saw snow falling on a beach. I was mesmerized by the sand turning white and the white flakes falling against the leaden sea. Virginia Beach, having now snow removal equipment, not even salt and sand in most areas, shut down. The festival, being a city function, shut down with it. My keynote Friday night was moved to Sunday afternoon. Field trips for Saturday morning were canceled. And, thanks to the icy road, the city wouldn’t allow the festival to use their school buses to get people to Saturday afternoon events, so everyone had to caravan in their own cars. These things happen. You can imagine. I felt keenly for the festival organizers. At one point 175 people had pre-registered for my talk. It was Katie’s job to contact all of them via email and phone and tell them the talk had been rescheduled. I was very thankful that I’d made a mistake and scheduled a Monday flight home, not one on Sunday. Sometimes things happen for a reason. In scheduling my flights, I had just assumed, based on all the other festivals I’d worked, that there would be something going on on Sunday. Turns out it was to be my keynote!

The little voice, speaking. Me, listening, not even knowing it would save the day.

Saturday morning dawned brilliant and draped in snow. I felt exalted and humbled to be at the beach in the snow. Forget the field trips, the reshuffling--I was on my knees.  That's not white sand--that's snow!

There was a large Christian youth group, or perhaps a convocation of them, staying in the hotel Friday night. I was worried that they'd have to scrub their trip, but in they came shortly before the snow started. They were exuberant and boisterous but good, and I was thankful that they went to bed at a decent hour. Well, some of them were up most of the night, playing on the beach in the snow. In the dark. Because it snowed at the beach, and they really got how cool that was. The next dawn, there they were, probably having been up all night playing in the snow. 

I automatically like people who go outside in freezing cold just to experience the beach in the snow.

She takes a photo of a gull with her phone.

Morning's tracks told the tale. Those kids were like a bunch of sanderlings. 

I found them feeding the ring-billed gulls at daybreak. So cute.

As the light grew, I had an amazing photo op thanks to the kids and their popcorn. Indigo ocean, snowy beach, hovering gulls.

The tail pattern on this 10-month-old ringbill enchanted me. That's just a guess--but if it was born in April it would be less than a year old.

I think this is my favorite shot of the bunch, though. Three angels in the snow.

Many people take ring-billed gulls for granted. But I saw the birds making a connection with the kids, and I loved them for that. They drew them closer to nature, brought them out on the beach. They are also beautiful birds.

Fun at the beach, in the snow. Life's an adventure--you just have to roll with what it serves up.