Amy at The World Is A Book challenges us this week to show old and new. I challenged myself to find an illustration of that pairing in one photo and I think I did it. As I type, we’re experiencing our first dust storm warning in the desert. The sky is dark, the wind is wicked, and if we were back in Illinois, the temperature would have plunged. As we’re in Arizona, at 7 pm it’s down (if you can call it that) from about 111F to 102. I feel positively chilled. 🙂
Not far from us is the Lake Renwick Preserve, home to cormorants, egrets, herons, pelicans and more. During the breeding season, March 1 through mid-August, the preserve is only open for public programs and guided bird viewing so as not to interrupt or bother the birds. On a nice day, it’s a lovely walk. This day was several summers ago, but worth a revisit!
Tree swallow seems like a rather colorless name for this bright beauty.
The main nesting area looks more than a bit like something from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
The sun’s up earlier these days and I got going a bit later so the sun was hitting the tops of the trees along the river when I arrived at the snow-covered park. It wasn’t a lot of snow, but enough to look pretty and cover the bumpy ice still on parts of the path. It was nice not to crunch at every step!
Turn around. There’s the sun just over the horizon.
Bottoms up!
Besides frost, there were lots of geese in the park. You know that goose down works well as an insulator or these guys would all be very, very cold! For whatever reason, all the geese congregate here early in the morning, then take off at intervals, for all the world as if they’re taking off from an airport. They make no noise while on the water, but as soon as they take off, the honking begins. By the time I get back from my walk, they’re all gone. But the next time I arrive, they’re back.
“Oh, listen. Listen!’ A sound like a big crowd a good way off, excited and shouting, getting closer. We stand up and scan the empty sky. Suddenly there they are (the geese), a wavering V headed directly over the hilltop, quite low, beating southward down the central flyway and talking as they pass. We stay quiet suspending our human conversation until their garrulity fades and their wavering lines are invisible in the sky.
They have passed over us like an eraser over a blackboard, wiping away whatever was there before they came.”
~Wallace Stegner
The early morning light illuminated the undersides of the geese as they flew overhead, distracting my from my search for frost photos. Because people feed them and because there are places they can get food, not all geese go south for the winter. I don’t mind them at the park, but when they’re at the nearby lake, their propensity for decorating the sidewalk with poop is distinctly off-putting.
After a several week cyber hiatus, Sally and her mobile photography challenge are back for another round in 2017. Sally, I hope you had a wonderful and refreshing time. Perhaps one day I’ll summon the fortitude to do the same. 🙂
Today we’re back to nature as our theme. Supposedly geese fly south in the winter, away from the chilly northern Illinois temperatures. But each year there are plenty of them left well into winter. As you can see from my photo, they gather on the river en masse, honking and readying themselves for take off, although where they’re actually going is anyone’s guess. It reminds me of an avian airport with one runway. After sufficiently getting their engines going, a small flock takes off, amid much racket. When the proper interval has passed, then next group does the same. However, despite all the takeoffs and the time of year, the goose population in our area is still doing well.
Other than the frame, this shot looks as it did when I took it on a cold but beautiful morning.
This, that and the other thing 