a point of connection

6.2.17 ~ Avery Pond, Groton, Connecticut
great egret by Timothy Rodgers

The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.
~ Susan Meiselas
(Whitney Museum of American Art: Handbook of the Collection)

black-crowned night heron (?) by Timothy Rodgers

One evening last week Tim took the camera down to the beach and the salt pond and came home with these beautiful shots! I’m pretty sure the bird above is a black-crowned night heron, but if I’m wrong I hope someone will correct me…

swan by Timothy Rodgers

The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.
~ Heinrich Heine
(Early Poems, Evening Songs)

swan and cygnet by Timothy Rodgers

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
~ Ansel Adams
(3000 Astounding Quotes)

double-crested cormorant by Timothy Rodgers

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
~ Dorothea Lange
(Ancestors in the Attic: Making Family Memorabilia into History)

courting pair of double-crested cormorants by Timothy Rodgers

maritime heritage festival

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9.9.16 ~ the tugboat “Patricia Ann” leads the parade,
shooting celebratory sprays of water into the air

Last weekend we went to the Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival. The weather was terribly hot and unbearably humid, but we pressed on… You can see how hazy it was in the pictures. I love tall ship parades. After the parade we went home to recuperate in our air conditioning. When you can’t cool off standing by the sea it is just too hot.

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9.9.16 ~ pretty sure this is the schooner “Columbia”
home port Panama City, Florida
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9.9.16 ~ pretty sure this is the schooner “Brilliant”
home port Mystic, Connecticut
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9.9.16 ~ schooner “Mystic Whaler”
home port New London, Connecticut
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9.9.16 ~ spectators at Eastern Point Beach
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9.9.16 ~ pretty sure this is the schooner “Amistad”
home port New London, Connecticut
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9.9.16 ~ another spectator

Later on we went over to New London to take a dinner cruise on the Mystic Whaler. I have a bit of history with this schooner. Back in the early 1980s two of my aunts signed up for a two-night cruise to Block Island. But just before they were to leave, one aunt got sick and couldn’t make it. The other aunt insisted I go with her, which I did, very reluctantly. I had three small children and didn’t want to leave them for two nights!

The cruise was a mixture of very high and very low experiences. I loved the sailing and the meals grilled outside on the deck and the captain singing and playing his guitar when we were anchored for the night. I just wished I was there with my husband! Sadly, though, my period came early and heavy and it was a struggle to use the “head” (bathroom) correctly. And in the next cabin was a teenage boy and his mother. They were up most of the night, or so it seemed, as the mother pounded his back trying to loosen the stuff in his lungs. He had cystic fibrosis and his suffering tugged at my heart.

So one day Tim surprised me with tickets for the dinner cruise. The following pictures were taken from the ship…

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9.9.16 ~ New London Harbor Light
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9.9.16 ~ New London Ledge Light
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9.9.16 ~ Zbierski House at Eastern Point Beach (our beach!)
it looks so different from the mouth of the Thames River
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9.9.16 ~ Tyler House at Eastern Point Beach
the benches behind the fence with the white posts are where
Tim & I usually sit to have our supper in the summer
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9.9.16 ~ in for a landing

As it turned out this cruise had its share of negative aspects, too. It was still so hot outside that I never needed the jacket I brought, figuring it would be cool out on the water. And I wish we had been informed that most of the tickets were held by a raucous group of people celebrating a birthday. They brought their own drinks and things got lively very quickly. Someone even started choking on his food and luckily someone else was there to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him.

So much for romance at sea!

before the storm

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9.2.16 ~ juvenile laughing gull

Five days ago there were a lot of birds at the beach, perhaps getting ready for Tropical Storm Hermine… I had some fun trying to identify the different stages of life of the laughing gulls…

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9.2.16 ~ non-breeding adult? or first summer? laughing gull
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9.2.16 ~ non-breeding adult? or first summer? laughing gull
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9.2.16 ~ non-breeding adult? or first summer? laughing gull

We had a few gusts of wind which ruffled some feathers…

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9.2.16 ~ laughing gull with feathers puffed up from a gust of wind

I wondered if the cormorants would be staying out on their island during the storm…

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9.2.16 ~ cormorants on their exclusive off shore island

The baby great black-backed gull wondered if we would be handing out a french fry. Tim had unintentionally dropped one recently, renewing hopes for some of the younger birds…

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9.2.16 ~ juvenile great black-backed gull

My friend knows better — he’s content to visit with us. 🙂

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9.2.16 ~ my herring gull friend with the mangled foot

We also saw a great egret — they don’t often come this close, preferring their island in the middle of one of the salt ponds.

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9.2.16 ~ great egret

The swan’s pond has mostly dried up due to the drought…

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9.2.16 ~ swan

Sharing the estuary by the sea wall, we were amazed to see eight snowy egrets feeding with the great egret, the swan and a flock of Canada geese!

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9.2.16 ~ swan and snowy egrets
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9.2.16 ~ great egret, snowy egrets and Canada goose

The calm before the storm… Hermine gave us mostly gale force winds and drizzle. Several branches and many leaves and twigs came off the trees, but no trees were uprooted in our vicinity. That was more than enough excitement for us!

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9.2.16 ~ swan and Canada geese

sprightly

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8.27.16 ~ probably a juvenile great black-backed gull

So… Yesterday there were three cormorants sitting on the breakwater, closer to land than I’ve ever seen them before. But, confound it, still too far away for a decent picture. And of course, they had no interest in spreading their wings out to dry. So tantalizingly close by, yet still so far away…

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8.27.16 ~ cormorants on the end of the breakwater at high tide

However, in my efforts to get as close as I could to the cormorants, I discovered a large group of gulls wading in the rocky pools created by high tide.

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8.27.16 ~ herring gull, wading
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8.27.16 ~ herring gull, rock climbing
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8.27.16 ~ herring gull, waiting for the next wave to cool off his feet

A few days ago my gull friend with the mangled foot came back! He was sitting on the white post in front of us as we sat down on a bench to eat our supper. 🙂 He took off several times, soaring up high and circling around the beach house and landing each time again on the post in front of us. I think he was trying to demonstrate that he was just fine, thank you. He seems so healthy and energetic now — he must have recovered from whatever malady was troubling him earlier this summer.

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8.27.16 ~ look who is back!!!

Yesterday I spotted him hanging out with the other gulls on the rocks. He was getting a drink of water. Gulls are able to drink salt water or fresh water.

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8.27.16 ~ posing for me – doesn’t he look sprightly?

My family thinks I should come up with a name for him but for some reason I can’t think of one. I’m also not even sure if “he” is male or female.

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8.27.16 ~ more drinking
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8.27.16 ~ so refreshing!
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After his thirst was quenched he decided to walk over to investigate a noisy group of gulls nearby.

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8.27.16 ~ walking with a sense of purpose
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8.27.16 ~ pausing to listen and contemplate

Meanwhile, another herring gull walked into view. He’s pretty handsome, too.

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8.27.16 ~ another herring gull

It seemed like everyone wanted their pictures taken!

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8.27.16 ~ another juvenile great black-backed gull
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8.27.16 ~ juvenile great black-backed gull

I’m still amazed that the juvenile great black-baked gulls are larger than the adult herring gulls. In fact, they are the largest species of gull in the world.

We didn’t see any laughing gulls this day, who are smaller than the herring gulls, but had seen several of them a few days beforehand.

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8.27.16 ~ Mystic Whaler heading out for a dinner cruise…

Summer is winding down, but it’s still hazy, hot and humid. We are close to setting a record for the hottest August in Connecticut weather history. Sigh… Looking forward to October!

moving with change

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7.31.16 ~ juvenile great black-backed gull ~ photo by Timothy Rodgers

Well, I’m sad to report that I haven’t seen my gull friend with the mangled foot since our encounter on July 10th… I have a strong feeling that he was indeed saying good-bye.

Sunday afternoon a different gull with an injured foot limped over to us to see what food we might offer him. He’s young so he hasn’t learned yet that most humans follow the rules and don’t feed the gulls. While I’m pretty sure our old friend was a herring gull, our new friend is much larger, perhaps a juvenile great black-backed gull.

Of course I was without camera, but I made sure to bring it with me yesterday. The sky was striking. But our new friend wasn’t there.

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8.1.16 ~ light and dark, late afternoon sun
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8.1.16 ~ laughing gull portrait

On Sunday the parking lot had been full of laughing gulls, but yesterday there was only one, and he perched near us, watching us eat. The laughing gulls don’t usually hang out on the white posts. It seems everyone is behaving differently these days!

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8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond

As we left for home I spotted this bird wading in the nearly dried up salt water pond. Connecticut is in a moderate drought. We have many great egrets but this one was smaller and I wondered if it was a young one. He was too far away to get a decent picture.

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8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond

Imagine my surprise when I enlarged a few of the pictures and noticed his yellow feet! Pretty sure this identifies him as a snowy egret, which is smaller than the great egret.

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8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond
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8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

Not sure what kind of little shorebird this but he sure looked cute exploring the exposed pond bed. So many appearances in the flow of life…

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8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
~ Alan Watts
(The Wisdom of Insecurity)

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8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

so much to say

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7.1.16 ~ my gull friend at Eastern Point Beach

Our son and daughter-in-law are visiting us from Georgia. Last night we went down to the beach for supper and a gull came over near to our picnic table. He was resting quietly on the grass for a while, and then he started voicing all kinds of mournful cries. We spoke to him a little bit and then, he stood up. That’s when I noticed his mangled foot and recognized him to be the gull I wrote about last September in this post: a long fine life.

So, he made it through the winter after all!

I had been a little sad I hadn’t seen him until now, fearing he hadn’t survived. But then one of Tim’s ham radio contacts mentioned a gull fitting his description was visiting a dock about a mile up the river. People were feeding him, which they shouldn’t do, but perhaps that’s why he hadn’t been down to the beach.

The gull then walked over to my side of the picnic table and sat down again. I spoke to him for a little while, unable to conceal my excitement over seeing him again. 🙂 I didn’t have my camera but he sat still while I got out my cell phone and snapped this picture.

In the past he would visit us by standing on whichever white post was closest to us. This is the first time he was sitting on the grass. And he vocalized for much longer than he has in the past. I like to think he was telling us about his winter and his plans for the summer.

Finally, he flew off and started hovering over a man with a hot dog in his hand. Still up to his old tricks… It was so good to see him.

a long fine life

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

Of course no evening at the beach would be complete without a visit from our old friend with the mangled leg and foot. The gull may just be greeting us in a friendly manner, but his call is so mournful and long we often wonder what tale of woe he is trying to share. The burdened gull looks in a lot better shape now than he did at the beginning of the summer.

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

I’ve learned not to feel too sorry for this gull. He doesn’t seem to feel sorry for himself. His large strong wings work perfectly well and we see him flying and fishing out over the rocks and the water. And every summer he’s an expert at swooping down and snatching hot dogs from unsuspecting diners at the picnic tables. I once saw him swallow a foot-long hot dog, whole, in one big gulp! Human food is not good for gulls and most people, including us, obey the rules not to feed them. At least not on purpose. 🙂

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

We learned that we are not this old gull’s only friends. While a group of three off-duty lifeguards were walking along, chatting and gathering up their equipment for the last time this summer, he flew over and landed on a picnic table right in front of them and squawked at them. They all said hello and spoke to him and then finally one said, as the gull flew off, “Good-bye, Claws! Please don’t die!”

So Tim & I are not the only ones who wonder at the end of each summer if this wounded gull will make it through the coming winter. Since I first met this gull in 2011, he must be at least four years old, probably more. Gulls live ten to fifteen years so it is possible he may be around for many summers to come.

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
~ Richard Bach
(Jonathan Livingston Seagull)

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

photos by Tim Rodgers

unofficial end of summer

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

Today we went down to the beach for our last hot dogs of the season. I haven’t been taking many pictures this summer – too busy with ailments, illnesses and surgeries and determined to post pictures of our Norway trip before starting on other picture projects. But we’ve been down at the beach as often as possible in the evenings and have enjoyed the gulls and their antics.

I don’t remember what year the tiny laughing gulls started appearing at our beach but there is a large flock of them now. This year they came away from the parking lot, which was an unsatisfactory background for photos, and spent more time on the grass and on the rocks by the water. So I brought the camera today and finally got some good pictures of a couple of them standing on the rocks. I’m pretty sure these are “first summer” non-breeding adults.

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9.7.15 ~ Eastern Point Beach

Feeling wistful, yearning for something intangible. It’s still too hot and unbearably humid. Record-breaking temperatures are forecast for the next few days – a heat wave in September. Ugh. Already school districts without air conditioning in classrooms are announcing early dismissals for tomorrow, like they did several times last week. Autumn cannot come soon enough. It will come, though – it always does.