Ice

Yesterday's storm has blown itself out, and today dawned crisp and blue. All day, the icicles grew longer and longer, like sharpened teeth in a grinning mouth, ready to gobble something up. I'm putting this picture up to remind myself of the cold in July, when we're all complaining about the heat.

Alias Smith, no Jones

I was in the shower when the text came this morning, saying that the Smith's Longspur had been seen again at Stone Harbor Point. Mike hammered on the door, imploring me to hurry. I did take a few minutes to dry my hair  (it was well below freezing, after all) and then we raced across the back bays. By the time we arrived, the troops had already marshaled, and we could see distant birders swiveling and pirouetting as the bird moved around them. A few minutes quick march, and we joined them on the frozen, gale-blasted beach, training our binoculars and scopes on the prize -- a rather nondescript little brown job shuffling along through the sand and snow. I feel a little sorry for it; this certainly isn't anything like the balmy lower Mississippi River valley where it normally overwinters!

Cold

Every summer for the past 17 years, I've made a pilgrimage to the far, far north -- beyond the Arctic Circle to the very edge of the continent. Even in June, the pack ice often hugs the shore there, stretching to the horizon, unbroken except for a few narrow leads. These days, the Delaware Bay is looking more than a little like Barrow! This was the view today near dusk -- and yes, that ice did extend out as far as I could see.

Sunset bird

Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter

The west was getting out of gold,

The breath of air had died of cold,

When shoeing home across the white,

I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place

I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill

I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn’t show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke

Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

Robert Frost

(with thanks to the Climbing Sky website)

Back bays and beaches

I was right -- it is hard to come back to the cold after a balmy week in Mexico. But a sunny morning beckoned, so we bundled up and went out anyway. Our target was a reported Smith's Longspur, a bird normally found far to the west of New Jersey. We didn't find it, despite much tromping around, but there were plenty of other things to enjoy.

At this time of year, the dunes are studies in tawny browns. On breezy days like today, the vegetation flaps like tattered flags. 

An "Ipswich Sparrow" pauses in its efforts to pry tiny Seaside Goldenrod seeds from their cases. This pale bird belongs to the subspecies "princeps" of the Savannah Sparrow. It breeds only on Sable Island, a tiny, narrow crescent of land located more than 100 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. As its world population numbers fewer than 6000 birds, it is considered to be a subspecies of "Special Concern".

This bizarre cloud formation is a "fallstreak hole"; the trailing tail is made up of falling ice crystals.

We finished the day at the Avalon seawatch, where thousands of sea ducks floated just offshore. The eerie, high-pitched whistling calls of the courting male Black Scoters -- and the distinctive "A ha lek" calls of the courting Long-tailed Ducks -- filled the air.

Desert

Flying into Houston this morning, I was struck by just how little natural habitat remains in many of our urban and suburban areas. Houses are crammed cheek by jowl, filling most of the lots on which they stand. Lawns are short, brown and weedless. Trees are restricted to severely pruned nonnatives, small and fruitless. For wildlife, this is a vast and barren desert. And that's a crying shame, because it doesn't have to be this way. With only a little initial effort, we could be maintaining wildlife habitat even in the heart of city and suburb (and cutting down seriously on the amount of time we have to spend mowing and weeding). We could be planting native trees and shrubs instead of fruitless hybrids. We could fill our gardens with host plants for butterflies, with nectar sources for hummingbirds, with things that produce proliferous seeds in autumn. We could leave brush piles for birds to retreat to when the cats menace. We could tolerate the occasional weed. And our lives would be the richer for it. 

It's not hard to create useful wildlife habitat instead of sterile wasteland. Websites like that of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens have plenty of good suggestions for how to proceed. If you care about the animals that share our planet, you might try a few of them!

Last day in Mexico

One last day in Mexico, spent around the ancient Zapotec ruins of Yagul and Mitla. The sun rose with a golden flourish, and we enjoyed the warmth of the day, knowing what awaits us when we head north again tomorrow. It's going to be hard to go back to those below-freezing temperatures!

Golden fields surround the ruins at Yagul, full of dried flower heads -- and hundreds of birds feasting on the seeds.

A Curve-billed Thrasher surveys its domain from a convenient candelabra cactus arm.

The old city of Mitla was known as the City of Death. It was where the highest ranking retired priests and rulers spent their final years. Above is one of the palaces, once home to a retired ruler. The stonemasonry is mind-boggling: tens of thousands of individually carved stones, carefully placed together -- without mortar -- and still standing hundreds of years later. Interesting that newer buildings all throughout Oaxaca have fallen in earthquakes while this one still looks relatively untouched.

Creeping

One of the things that I most love about birding is finding -- or learning more about --  the unexpected. Take the woodcreepers we spotted today in the mountains of Oaxaca.  They look rather like Strong-billed Woodcreepers found elsewhere in Central America (including the eastern lowlands of Mexico); they're huge and rusty, with enormous beaks. They're in the books as Strong-billed Woodcreepers, and listed as "rare in Oaxaca". But their songs are all wrong. They don't sound like their counterparts found anywhere else, so maybe they're not really Strong-billed Woodcreepers after all! Whatever they turn out to be, they're fun to watch. We had four chasing each other around in the moss-draped forest above La Cumbre today, hitching their way up tree trunks and gliding across clearings on coppery splayed wings.

A day's tapestry

While Cape May shivers through another round of snow and frigid temperatures, I spent the day basking in the sunny warmth of Oaxaca's central valley. It's going to be hard to go back to winter!

Anybody who thinks sparrows are all boring little brown jobs has obviously never seen Mexico's decidedly snazzy Bridled Sparrow.

We took some time out during the hottest part of the day and enjoyed some fine Zapotec cuisine and a rug-weaving demonstration in Teotitlán del Valle. What craftsmanship!

Monte Albán

Today, we visited Monte Albán, the largest (and in my opinion the most spectacular) of the Zapotec ruins found in Oaxaca. The ancient city was huge, containing some 40,000 people and sprawling across four hilltops. The main site measured some 300 meters by 200 meters (roughly 900 feet by 600 feet) and it was leveled completely by hand; the whole top of a mountain was removed and carted off -- and the Zapotecs had no beasts of burden, and no metal tools. I marvel at the vision someone had of what could be, and at the dedication needed to turn that vision into reality.

I've always loved the layered look of hills receding into the distance.  

This is the view from the entrance to Monte Albán.

 The steps up to the north platform, as seen from the main plaza. Once, this whole structure would have been covered with painted stucco.

The ever expanding city of Oaxaca laps at the base of Monte Albán's hills.

For me, birds are never far out of the picture; this aptly named Thick-billed Kingbird was calling and hunting just down the hill from the ruins.

Pining

Today, I was in one of my very favorite places in Mexico -- a lovely pine-oak forest high in the Sierra Aloapaneca mountains in Oaxaca. It's a rumpled mountain landscape, softened by vast stretches of geological time, so that the stony bits have been worn smooth and covered with vegetation. The trees are draped with bromeliads, epiphytes and orchids, lichens and mosses; at times the branches literally disappear under their load of "hangers on". Sometimes the clouds hang low, ghosting along the ridges and tangling among the trees, leaving glistening drops on every pine needle and leaf tip. On other days, like today, the azure skies above seem limitless. The air smells of pine, crisp and clean. Sometimes the grind of a logging truck or the buzz of a distant chainsaw intrudes, but mostly I'm struck by the lack of human generated noise. Other than birdsong, the buzz of passing insects and the sound of wind through the trees, the silence reigns supreme.

Late afternoon sunlight on pine needles turned them a glittering silver. An interesting factoid: Mexico has more species of pine than any other country on the planet.

Oaxaca blues

I'm sure there must be some scientific reason why the sky is a more intense blue at lower latitudes. Or maybe that's so only in low latitude areas with low humidity. Whatever the case, the sky here in Oaxaca today was a glorious azure, with not a cloud in sight. Of course, that's not necessarily good news for reservoirs such as this one (a mere shadow of its former self) just above the famous weaving village of Teotitlán del Valle.

One of the day's treats was a gang of nine Boucard's Wrens that swarmed across a grassy field and bounced along a brick wall studded with protruding rebar. Talk about snazzy! Mexico is at the epicenter of wren evolution. The country has 31 species, including 11 found nowhere else in the world. That's more species of wren than are found in all of Europe and Asia combined!

Flycatchers

Nothing says "You're not in Cape May anymore" faster than a bright red flycatcher!  This male Vermilion Flycatcher was hunting from the tree right in front of my hotel room, making flashing sorties after passing insects.  It hardly seems fair that most of the flycatchers we get in New Jersey are drab little gray ones.

Night flight

Airborne again today, en route to Oaxaca, Mexico; I wonder how many months of my life I've spent 5 miles or more above the surface of the earth?!  The second leg of today's journey happened after the sun went down, with a gorgeous, fat orange moon visible out my (left side) window for much of the flight. Today's shot was snapped shortly after we took off from Houston.  It's amazing how quickly the lights disappeared once we crossed the border from the US into northern Mexico.

Gold

Cape May certainly has its share of gorgeous scenery. I headed down to Cape May Point State Park late in the day, looking for pictures to take in the slanting golden light of a winter afternoon. I love the soft colors of this time of year.

 A late afternoon scan of Bunker Pond at Cape May Point State Park.

 This Tundra Swan is a recent arrival, a winter visitor from points north.

 The sunset looked like something out of a movie set.

The Cape May Light, guiding ships as it has for more than 150 years.

A walk on the beach

I love being one of the first people along the beach after a day of rain. The sand was pristine, unmarked except for the spatter patterns left by the raindrops, and the scattered signs of wild things that got there before me -- a trail of rabbit footprints, the barely-there scratchings of some bird among the dune vegetation, the sweeping circular traces of a windblown grass stem. Fog still lingered first thing this morning, rendering the sea invisible, though the surge of the tide against the jetty carried clearly, as did the eerie whistles of the courting Black Scoters and the faraway ping of the Cape May canal's fog horn.

 The battered, molted shell of a horseshoe crab. In a few months, the live ones will be spawning on our beaches again.

 I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be a mole tunneling in the sand! Yet, judging by the number of trails I found, they must do quite well here.

 The runoff from yesterday's rain left traces like those of the braided rivers that flow out of glaciers.

 The storm left piles of these little sea plants scattered on the beach.

 Another tiny creature, left stranded by the tide. 

 A string of whelk eggs, which appear to have hatched successfully.

The Cape May Light, nearly invisible in the fog.

In case of rain...

When all else fails, bake brownies!

Baywatch

Late this afternoon, I headed over to the Delaware Bay to look for a vagrant gull that had been reported earlier in the day. My friend Vince had already arrived, and had scanned through the flock on a nearby sandbar; the target bird was centered in his telescope. A quick peek yielded the gull, snoozing contentedly among a host of its cousins, head tucked firmly under one wing. And as an added bonus, we had the "coming soon" preview of another painted sunset.

Sadly, I couldn't get any pictures of the Black-headed Gull, a species that was abundant around our former digs in the UK; it was too far away for my little camera. Instead, I had to be content with this American Herring Gull, which was rummaging along the tideline, looking for tidbits. It looks like the red spot on its beak is already starting to color up a bit. That spot is a cue for its chicks while they're still being fed by Mom or Dad; the chick pecks that spot when it's ready to be fed, and the parent barfs up whatever it's carrying in its stomach (dead fish, McDonald's french fries, baby birds -- whatever). Gross, but an effective means of transporting things when you don't have hands to carry them with!

Snow(y) Day

The Cape May beaches in January stretch for mile after empty mile, with nary a beach umbrella or towel or beach chair in sight. For much of the day, we had the strand to ourselves, though a few truly crazy surfers bobbed offshore, clad head to toe in thick neoprene wetsuits.

I read a quote once (which I can't find now, of course) about surf rushing to shore like galloping horses, and that's certainly what the lines of swells reminded me of today, particularly where the wind caught the tops of them. With a bit of imagination, you could almost see heads nodding and manes streaming.

Of course, the day's prime targets were birds. "New" birds. Birds we hadn't seen yet this year. And I, at least, wasn't disappointed. On the stone jetties edging the entrance to Cape May Harbor, busy gangs of Purple Sandpipers and Ruddy Turnstones gleaned among exposed mussel beds. Just offshore, hundreds and hundreds of sea ducks swam and preened and snoozed and courted. But the real gem of the day -- and the reason for the title of this blog post -- was the gorgeous Snowy Owl we found guarding his prey (an unfortunate Black Duck) among the dunes. What a fine finish to the weekend!

Purple Sandpiper

A male Black Scoter does his very best to impress a passing female.

A Long-tailed Duck catches its breath between dives.

One of our long-staying Snowy Owls, after a successful hunt.

Fog

Today was a very English sort of day. Fog and drizzle softened the landscape, muffling sounds, muting hues and rendering everything a bit melancholy. But this is merely a pause for breath between seasons. A few short months from now, the dunes and marshes will be bursting with song and color and growing things. Note to self: be sure to return to these spots to document the changes.

Rain

A chilly day of rain yielded drops that gleamed like lamps along the rose stems.

Sand Art

While walking the length of Stone Harbor Point today, trying (in vain) to relocate one of the Snowy Owls that's been spending the winter in the area, I came across some wonderful examples of natural "abstract art". These wind and water created ripples and patterns stopped me in my tracks -- and helped to soften the blow of an owl-free afternoon.