Shippensburg In Bloom

Shippensburg has entered full Summer mode. Gardens are flourishing, the Roses around town are all in full bloom, porch planters are overflowing with color, and the hanging flower baskets are up on King St. I went for a walk around town this morning to take it all in.

Red, red Roses on King St.

A porch planter on King St.

A Rhododendron in the garden at the Widow Piper's Tavern

Petunias in one of the King St. hanging baskets

Begonias in one of the King St. hanging baskets

English Ivy climbing the King St. bridge over Branch Creek

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Bird Walk

Today was the biweekly Sunday bird walk out of the Norman Bird Sanctuary, and we had a good one! We went down to Third Beach and the salt marsh behind it, and then over to Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge. We got some good sightings.

In the Third Beach salt marsh there was a lot of activity - Killdeer, Great Egrets, a Glossy Ibis, a mixed bag of Gulls including about 4 Laughing Gulls, and a Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper. I only really got good shots of the Killdeer (top left) and the Great Egrets (top right and bottom).

Over in the Sachuest Point NWR there was a lot of activity as well - lots of Gray Catbirds, Robins, Mockingbirds, Yellow Warblers, and Goldfinches. We found a baby Mocker (top) hopping on the trail with Mama on a branch overhead fretting away. And not much farther along the trail we found this Goldfinch willing to pose (bottom).

On the way out of Sachuest Point on the way back to town we found this young male Red-tailed Hawk perching on a telephone pole keeping an eye out for lunch. Naturally we stopped the car, and my buddy Bob and I got out to get some shots of him. I posted two here so you can get a view of those gorgeous red tail feathers!

And back to town! Naturally I made a beeline for my favorite spot. I got more shots of the adult Great Crested Flycatchers feeding the nestlings, but you'll have to wait for tomorrow for that; the shots I got today have a theme to them and deserve a post of their own. Meantime, I got a shot of one of the Flycatchers' food sources, a Calico Pennant dragonfly in the Quarry Meadow.

And I'll leave you with this shot of a male Redwinged Blackbird chip, chip, chipping away at me from his perch on a reed stem along Hazard Rd. in the Gooseneck Cove salt marsh, not at all pleased that I was so close to his young'uns just learning to fly.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow to see some uniquely Flycatcher acrobatics!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Bird Walk

Today was the biweekly Sunday bird walk, but since only the three of us (Mark, Bob, and I) joined walk leader Jay in the parking lot at the Norman Bird Sanctuary, Jay decided to keep the walk on NBS property. [Note: The reason for the poor attendance was the weather; it had rained overnight with more rain in the forecast. It never did rain again, but the air was very wet and thhe overcast made it a fairly dark day.]

There were lots of birds to see, but not all of my shots came out well. These are the ones that did work out well. Top left, one of many Cedar Waxwings in a Juneberry tree pigging out on the berries. Top right, a baby bunny on one of the trails. Bottom, a Turkey hen with some of her poults; when they all emerged from the tall grass we counted 10. Sorry for the quality of this shot, but I couldn't pass up showing you our Wild Turkey encounter!

After the walk Mark, Bob and I headed down to Third Beach and its salt marsh. We saw a female Piping Plover sitting on her nest (well protected by a cage that lets Plovers in and out but keeps predators - and clumsy humans - at bay; these are endangered birds), a Short-billed Dowitcher, and a couple of Black-bellied Plovers, all in the salt marsh. Unfortunately, they were in binocular range but out of range of the camera. On the beach, though, a crowd of birds came flying up from over the water. There were a bunch of Sanderlings, a Semipalmated Plover, and this prize of the day, a Dunlin in breeding plumage.

And as is usual on bird walk Sunday, I finished out the day down on Gooseneck Cove, where I caught this Mallard/American Black Duck hybrid swimming serenely along in the soft light of a damp and overcast day.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Busy Holiday Sunday

Today was bird walk Sunday, so the day started out at the Norman Bird Sanctuary, and because my ride had to be back in town earlier than usual, I got more time for my regular Sunday constitutional, so I wandered a bit farther than usual, with good results.

In the Sanctuary itself we first ran into a deer along one of the trails (top left). Just beyond it is a field full of Bluebird houses; unfortunately it looks like there are no Bluebirds taking them up on the offer. But the Tree Swallows are out in force, and we suspect it's they who are taking up residence instead; I managed to get a shot of one posing atop one of the house poles (top right). Down the road at Third Beach along property owned by the NBS we saw this Willow Flycatcher perched on a wire (bottom left); there were plenty of them around, and their characteristic FITZ-hew was in the air the whole time we were down there. And finally, when I got back into Newport and wandered through Ballard Park I ran into this immature Cooper's Hawk (bottom right) perched on a dead branch over the Vernal Pond in the quarry.

Down on Hazard Rd. in the Gooseneck Cove salt marsh I found lots of Blue-eyed Grass.

And down on the Ocean Drive end of the Cove at the Green Bridge, Tern Rock is full of Common Terns.

I found some Forget-me-nots growing along Hammersmith Road.

And I got a surprise at Hammersmith Farm - in one of the fenced-in areas among the sheep and goats I saw this African Spurred Tortoise (Geochelone sulcata). I have no idea what it was doing there amidst all the heritage breed farm animals!

And finally, this shot of the tour schooner Madelaine sailing out of Newport Harbor into Narragansett Bay past the Rose Island Lighthouse, shot from Fort Adams.

And that was the long walk today. Whew! I'm tired! And a tad bit sunburned, too. It's time for some iced tea and a nap.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Friend

I don't usually take pictures of people, so I don't have very many pictures of my friends. There are some exceptions, though.

Below is the only shot of my friend Jackie that I have in digital form. I have more, but they're from the days when I was using film and sending them out to be developed into actual hard-copy photos, and at the moment my scanner is dead. This one was scanned as well, but it seems to be the only one I scanned at the time. Well, there are others, but they're not very good and Jackie's threatened me with a slow, painful death if I ever publish them. I went to high school with Jackie down in Maryland, and we hooked back up in 2002 through our graduating class's Yahoo Groups mailing list. She lives in Colorado now, but she came east that year for the Newport Folk Festival to see Dylan's return to the festival after years of his boycotting it. This shot was taken after the festival was over and we went to Horseneck Beach in nearby Westport, MA, one of the best beaches in the area. Yeah, I was giving her the tourist tour!

In 2007 I met Elizabeth Evans, known to just about everybody as "Bob" because her Dad wanted a son after a string of daughters; when his wife presented him with another daughter he rebelled. Bob was a fellow photo essay enthusiast posting on Gather.com, and since she lives only about 45 minutes away in Massachussetts, we started doing photo trips together. But the first time we met in person was for the 2007 Norman Bird Sanctuary Harvest Fair on September 29 of that year. Bob and her husband Bill, fondly known as "Papa", had made a trip down to the NBS earlier that year after seeing a two-part photo essay I'd done on the place that July. So when I phoned them and told them the Harvest Fair was coming up, they were all set to go. The following picture is of Papa (in the chair) and Bob (sitting on the ground) watching Jim McGrath and the Reprobates playing at the music stage.

The next shot is from the same Harvest Fair. This is my little buddy Waylon; he was 2 in that shot. Waylon's parents, Nikki and Vic, are friends on mine, so Waylon's been a buddy since he was born. In this instance he's hanging on to Bill, who he'd just met, because I was just on the other side of Bob with a big bag of Kettle Corn, and Waylon loves him some Kettle Corn! Nikki was sitting behind me regretting her son's appetite. Heh, heh! And yeah, even though the shot was taken deep in the Red Sox Nation, that's a Phillies cap on Waylon's head - Nikki and Vic are from Philadelphia.

The next shot is of my friend Virginia, who has gone on quite a few photo safaris with me, including hiking in the snow at Weetamoo Woods, where this shot was taken. V and I both worked at the local Home Depot and were both unemployed after having been relieved of our duties there. V decided a cheesecake shot on this bridge over the creek in the park was a good idea. Despite all her snow-bunny regalia she still got chilly lying still in the snow on that cold, cold stone!

And just so y'all don't get confused as to who this is posting this, I'll get back to my usual subject matter with a shot I took of two buddies sharing a branch - two Mourning Doves in Ballard Park in April of 2008.

Music time! Okay, so given the generation I was born in, the first "friend" song that popped into my head had to be Carole King's "You've Got a Friend". Seriously, when the Tapestries album came out, I'd learned all the songs on it in a week. And "You've Got a Friend" is just one of those timeless classics. This video is taken from a 2006 PBS tribute to James Taylor, who turned Ms. King's already hit song into something that launched into the heavens and lit the night skies. And wouldn't you know it, ol' JT came up on stage and sang with her. Obviously a grand time was had by all that night!

The other song about friends that popped into my head simultaneously with the Carole King song was Bette Midler's "Friends". I looked on YouTube but couldn't find a concert clip I liked, so I picked this slideshow backed by the song because it describes the song so well. Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Birding

Every two weeks a guy named Jay leads a bird walk from the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown, RI. We don't just concentrate our attention on the sanctuary, but travel to different prime birding places in the area. This week we went down to Third Beach (most of which now belongs to the bird sanctuary) then over to the parking lot at Sachuest Beach because someone had seen a flock of Snow Buntings there, and then over to the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge. It was a dark, overcast morning, and I was having lighting issues (like a dummy I didn't bring my tripod!), but I did manage to get two keepers.

This White-winged Scoter was sitting in a puddle in an auxilliary parking lot across Third Beach Rd. from the actual Beach. A little later we saw more Scoters - usually birds you find in large rafts a quarter mile or so offshore - in more inland waters. We speculated that the storm that blew through Friday night and yesterday (the remains of Tropical Storm Ida) forced some of the offshore birds inland for shelter. We think this one may have been injured; it never moved the whole time we were there snapping away, and it was sitting in, not floating on, that water.

We spotted this Dunlin, a member of the Sandpiper family, feeding on Third Beach. He was quite a busy little guy!

We also saw the Snow Buntings in the Sachuest Beach parking lot, as well as both Common and Red-throated Loons in Winter plumage, Harlequin and Common Eider ducks, and a Northern Gannet in (or over, in the case of the Gannet) the waters off Sachuest Point. All of those were outside camera range for me, but from a birding standpoint it was a very successful morning!

Afterward, after coming back to town (Newport), I headed straight for my usual Sunday stomping grounds - Ballard Park and Gooseneck Cove. I didn't get anything usable in the park, but I did manage to get two good shots on Gooseneck Cove.

There was a small flock of Hooded Mergansers on the east end of the Cove, but they quickly moved out of camera range. These little ducks are very people-shy. Luckily, I managed to get a decent shot of this male fleeing my presence.

This Lesser Yellowlegs, another member of the Sandpiper family, was hanging out in the salt marsh in the main section of Gooseneck Cove. He was hard to get a shot of because he kept bobbing his head; I'd get a great shot of the rest of the bird but the head would be blurred. I finally managed to get a shot between bobs, as it were.

And that's my Sunday bird walk. I hope you enjoyed it.

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger