27 July 2020 (dove)

the dove’s coos

just soft enough…

summer heat

25 June 2020 (dove)

foggy day

the nostalgic note

in a dove’s coo

March 7: Last day in the Bahamas

I've been sick for the past few days, so my outings have been less exuberant. I did make it out for a few hours around our hotel in downtown Nassau before we flew home, enjoying a quiet moment near a pool at the Greycliff listening to the doves coo in the palms.

Palm fronds rustle like rain,
doves coo a lullaby.
I don't miss snow.

March 5: Blue Holes

Small Hope Bay Lodge's nature guide Tarran took us on a blue hole tour this morning in the nearby national park. Certain trees along the trail to Rainbow Hole were labeled, and Tarran shared with us each tree's value to bush medicine. At the hole itself, he encouraged us to take off our shoes and let the swarms of tiny gobi fish nibble our feet. We jokingly called this the spa tour. The fish tickled.

In Maidenhair Coppice, while trying to track down a Great Lizard-cuckoo, an elusive species we finally heard calling, we heard an even more elusive bird: the Key West Quail-dove. Given the density of the foliage in the coppice, I couldn't imagine how we'd actually see it. I guess our best bet would be for it to fly across the road in front of us. Its voice sounds like the moan of a distant foghorn. Unfortunately for us, a very distant foghorn. We didn't end up seeing either bird. But we enjoyed our tour, which culminated with a swim in 400-ft deep Capt. Bill's Hole.

In the afternoon I rode one of the lodge's bikes to Androsia, the batik factory started by the second wife of the lodge's founder. Meanwhile, my husband was bonefishing all morning, and learned how to scuba dive all afternoon. A little nature, a little culture, a lot of exercise in the subtropical air.

In the coppice's heat

dove's call a distant foghorn--

I'm thinking of home.

Paul fishing at Small Hope Bay Lodge

Capt. Bill's Blue Hole

Androsia Batik Factory

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February 26: Arrival

Flying out of Boston this morning, my husband, our friends Derek and Jeannette, and I touch down before lunch in busy Nassau, the largest city in the Bahamas--a distinct contrast of climate and culture to where we came from. The taxi ride from the airport passes long white sand beaches lined with palms. We check into our worn downtown hotel within view of the pink parliament building and head out to explore: tourist shops, liquor stores, pirate museum, straw market, conch fishermen, line of restaurants on Arawak Cay selling cracked (fried) conch and rum cocktails, abandoned buildings, art museum, crowds of uniformed schoolchildren, rum distillery, honking cars, flowers. We've gained about 60 degrees, the place literally wraps its warm arms around us. Heat is a foreign country.

A small jungle grows
amid ruined, pink walls.
Doves nest here now.

Ruins, downtown Nassau

Ruins, downtown Nassau

John Watling Distillery, Nassau

Conch fishermen, Nassau

The Straw Market, Nassau

Nassau schoolchildren

July 24: Morning ritual

Although I love mornings--the light, the birdsong, the promise of the day ahead--I'm not a "morning person." I just wasn't made that way. So I try to follow a morning ritual, of sorts, to help me ease into the day calmly: a word game on my iPad, the daily New York Times crossword puzzle, my usual bowl of cereal (sharing the milk at the bottom of the bowl with the cat), perhaps an early round of the flower beds dead-heading the day lilies. Then, with everything in order, I step out into the rest of my day...

Slow start--dove's soft coo,
cereal with fresh berries,
a crossword puzzle.

July 15: Nesting Dove

One of my co-workers said he had a surprise to show me on our Beech Hill Preserve, and I asked if it was something related to birds. Of course, he said. So today when we were all up at Beech Nut to celebrate the Land Trust's 25th anniversary, I got to see what it was:

Mourning Dove

The stewardship team had been repainting some trim on the restored old stone hut, and this dove on her nest was tucked away under the eaves at the back of the building, nestled into the stones. She's very well camouflaged. Even the nest resembles bits of the hut's sod roof. 

Apparently she flew off when they first started working near the nest (which contains four eggs), but quickly returned and then just hunkered down and endured their presence. They got within a few feet of her--and at one point, her mate--but she didn't budge. She must have realized they meant no harm. Around the corner, up near the roof beams, is a phoebe nest full of nestlings. This hut which was never a home to any human--it was built as a day-use tea hut in 1914--is at least providing a safe place for birds to nest. Which is really what the preserve is all about.

Still as a field stone,

dove makes her nest on the rocks.

Her black eyes watch me.

June 20: Dove

It's Father's Day, but my dad's away today and I haven't come across any inspiring paternal images to write about in his honor--except for the pileated woodpecker (a bird my dad always enjoys seeing), which has been insistently calling up and down the river today for some unknown masculine purpose. If he were home, my dad would probably be hearing it too, as my parents and I live about a mile apart on the same river.

The report called for rain this afternoon, so I spent this sunny morning working in my garden, trying to create a bit of order in the chaos of the flourishing beds. While I clipped and deadheaded and weeded, I could hear a neighbor's chicken clucking and cackling, apparently having just laid her morning egg. I love that we voted to allow people in town to have up to nine chickens--it just makes so much sense in this age of sustainability and trying to eat locally. And I love that several of my neighbors have chickens, even though we don't directly benefit. When I was growing up, my grandparents kept chickens, so I have fond memories of caring for Henrietta, Betty, Harcourt et al. and collecting their eggs. The clucks and cackles of chickens are soothing noises. I'm currently reading Sy Montgomery's new book Birdology, which begins with an excellent chapter on chicken culture. You'll never look at a chicken the same way again.

All my co-workers except one (who's building a coop next summer) have chickens now, but I have no desire to own any myself, so enjoying the clucking of the neighbors' birds a block away will have to do. But then I noticed a pert brown mourning dove pecking away in the gravel of our driveway. There's my chicken, I thought. Doves are like miniature chickens, soft and gentle, always hanging around the yard or on the driveway. This one even flew to the sidewalk behind me for a while as I was puttering in the garden just a few yards away. Granted, we aren't eating any dove's eggs for breakfast, but their presence, like that of a flock of smooth little chickens, is a small comfort.

Not tame, but the dove
on my lawn brings as much joy
as a flock of hens.