Book of Days
BOOK OF DAYS: A POET AND NATURALIST TRIES TO FIND POETRY IN EVERY DAY
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Filtering by Tag: Reid State Park
Posted with BlogsyDecember 7: Day at the beach
Kristen Lindquist
This morning I birded with my friend Derek at Reid State Park, which features two lovely, long, sandy beaches washed by sparkling surf. At one point in our ramble up the strand, a very loud ship's horn sounded. We later learned that this noise came from a new stealth destroyer that had just launched and was headed out to open ocean from the Kennebec River. Earlier, we had seen people standing on the Bath bridge looking down on Bath Ironworks, where the ship had been built, obviously waiting for the launch. Derek had commented then that it cost over $1 billion to build; hard to reconcile a toy of war with such a bright and peaceful winter's day.
morning beach walk
we scan for sea ducks
new destroyer slips out to sea
August 3: Reid State Park
Kristen Lindquist
January 21: Gulls at the dump
Kristen Lindquist
Spent a perfect morning birding with a friend at Reid State Park. Cold, but little wind, bright sun, blue skies, birds bobbing in the waves. I even saw a longed-for life bird, a Dovekie, actively feeding very close to shore.
But no day of birding is complete without a stop at the local dump. So after our beach outing, the natural next stop was the Bath Landfill--to study gulls, of course. Thanks to a couple of nearby eagles, the gulls were all aswirl. Watching hundreds of white birds circling en masse above my head was a truly mesmerizing experience, akin to watching a snow storm in car headlights. Look closely at this photo. At a cursory glance, it looks like empty blue sky, but see all those tiny white specks? Those are gulls!
A dump worker referred to them as "dump ducks" and probably thought we were crazy. But there's no better place to observe gulls. Despite the great numbers of birds, we only picked out two unusual gulls amid the swirling swarm: a Glaucous and an Iceland Gull, both white-winged species. But standing there watching all those moving, shifting birds, I felt a true awe--similar to the feeling of looking up at a night sky strewn with stars.
Gulls at the dump--
surprised to feel such awe
while surrounded by trash.
But no day of birding is complete without a stop at the local dump. So after our beach outing, the natural next stop was the Bath Landfill--to study gulls, of course. Thanks to a couple of nearby eagles, the gulls were all aswirl. Watching hundreds of white birds circling en masse above my head was a truly mesmerizing experience, akin to watching a snow storm in car headlights. Look closely at this photo. At a cursory glance, it looks like empty blue sky, but see all those tiny white specks? Those are gulls!
A dump worker referred to them as "dump ducks" and probably thought we were crazy. But there's no better place to observe gulls. Despite the great numbers of birds, we only picked out two unusual gulls amid the swirling swarm: a Glaucous and an Iceland Gull, both white-winged species. But standing there watching all those moving, shifting birds, I felt a true awe--similar to the feeling of looking up at a night sky strewn with stars.
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| Mesmerized by gulls. Photo by Derek Lovitch. |
Gulls at the dump--
surprised to feel such awe
while surrounded by trash.