May 16 - 18: Back on Monhegan

Spent the past three days on Monhegan Island, about 15 miles off the coast of Maine in Muscongus Bay. While this incredibly scenic place is an artist colony and a popular tourist destination, this time of year it's all about the birds. Monhegan lies in the Atlantic flyway and is a notorious migrant trap; many species rarely seen anywhere else in Maine show up there during the spring and fall flights.

 

It's still early spring out there, with leaves just budding and only the earliest of flowers blooming. Intermittent thick fog added to the chill. But the birds, the birds were on the move, impelled north by forces they don't understand, adding color, and joy, to the spare island landscape.

 

Manana Goats

 

Back on the island

goats loosed for summer--

their joy is mine.

 

 

Burnt Head in Fog

 

Shifting island fog

reveals in surf below

errant buoys, eiders.

 

 

Hooded Warbler

 

Early morning calm--

hers is the only motion,

yellow of first light.

 

 

Orioles

 

A bounty of orange

appearing, disappearing--

hungry for more.

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

June 13: Oriole

I experienced a strange synchronicity today--speaking on the phone with a friend, she told me that after the last time we talked, she hung up the phone and saw an oriole outside her window. It made her think of me. I couldn't respond right away because I was a bit freaked out. "Had we spoken of orioles last time we talked?" I asked. No, she'd just made a bird connection because of my interest. Then I explained that on the wall in front of my desk I have a big poster, "Sibley's Backyard Birds." When I talk on the phone, the bird I'm staring at, the one right at eye-level, is the Baltimore Oriole. In fact, I was absently looking right at it when she told me this.

From my eyes to yours--
an oriole's quantum leap,
vivid to us both.