I can't sleep…
Pink Day. See more photos of Pink-a-palooza here and Twilight to Sunrise here.
Inspired by excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem — “By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.” — Mary Oliver, “Sleeping in the Forest” in Sleeping in the Forest (Ohio University, 1978)
Video taken at Twilight, 5:25 a.m. this morning. 68° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
For more shots from this morning click here: Frank & Egrets and here: Waves and Light Show.
Post inspired by a quote from Rachel Cusk’s new book: “Nature seemed to be in its heyday, seemed to speak of its power of recovery from human violence, its vigil through successive dawns to re-emerge perennially into the light. It basked in a wordless moral plenitude, innocent.” — Rachel Cusk, Parade: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 18, 2024)
Swans are the gentle giants of my local waterways: floating paragons of snowy serenity that cruise peacefully through muddy brown water amid the rowdy confusion of their smaller brethren.
And they present a puzzle. Around them, mallards, Egyptian geese and Mandarin ducks have plumage so varied that it seems like any little speck of dirt or grime would disappear into the design. But the swans, paddling around in water so opaque that their feet can’t be seen, tip their tail feathers high in the air to forage underwater for the deepest plants—yet they re-emerge an unreasonably pure white. How do they stay so clean?
[…]
Just as a swan uses an oily coating to repel water, to get rid of oil it needs a watery coating. And the answer—discovered only three years ago in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials—is saliva. A swan’s spit is full of proteins that have a water-loving end and an oil-loving end. Once in a while, the bird distributes saliva on its feathers instead of preen oil, and the oil-loving ends stick to the feathers, leaving the water-loving ends exposed.
This makes the feathers attractive to water, and so allows the watery saliva to penetrate deep into the feathers. Once it’s there, it finds channels lined with tiny wedges. The wedge shapes help surface tension push the water from the center of the feather to the edges, sweeping along and clearing out any tiny droplets of oil or fat on the way.
The feathers get a watery deep cleaning as the tiniest oily contaminants are carried away. After a while, air dries the saliva out, and the surface returns to its normal water-hating state while the swan is restored to its pristine purity.
It’s a fascinating system, and scientists and engineers are now trying to replicate it to make self-cleaning fabrics that we could use. But kudos to the swan, for having evolved the perfect spit-and-sparkle system for keeping itself clean.
Read full article here.
— Helen Czerski, from “How Swans Stay White in Muddy Waters” (Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2024)
DK Photo: May 31, 2023. 4:30 am. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos of the swans from that morning here.
I knew when I took the shot this morning it would be a triggering moment for Sawsan who swoons over Sparrows.
Then I posted the shot on Instagram. In seconds, a text message comes flying in: “POST the Sparrow, PLEASE.”
Then message alerts won’t stop: Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping PING. PING. She lights up my inbox after I ask her to share a few thoughts on why I should post the picture.
I was a bit taken back — she said ‘PLEASE‘ vs. the customary JUST-DO-IT. Finally, a wee bit of control over Her on Something. I feel such joy over this…
Sawsan said it all started here with my post: Riding Metro North. With “My” Little Bird.’
Then she shares a passage from Thoreau in ‘Walden‘: “I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”
I had to look up “epaulet.”
I re-read the passage, and thought about the summer afternoon when the kids and I went to Cove Island Park. I had Birdie (our Sun Conure) on my shoulder — and, the kids were a least one hundred yards behind me, belly crawling in the grass, nope, don’t know him, never saw him before in our life.
But we digress.
Continue reading “Sunday, Sparrows, Sawsan (do unto others as….)”
“…Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline, while being utterly serene…
“When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might previously have overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides…
Of course, having the time to bird is an immense privilege. As a freelancer, I have total control over my hours and my ability to get out in the field. “Are you a retiree?” a fellow birder recently asked me. “You’re birding like a retiree.” I laughed, but the comment spoke to the idea that things like birding are what you do when you’re not working, not being productive.
I reject that. These recent years have taught me that I’m less when I’m not actively looking after myself, that I have value to my world and my community beyond ceaseless production, and that pursuits like birding that foster joy, wonder and connection to place are not sidebars to a fulfilled life but their essence.
It’s easy to think of birding as an escape from reality. Instead, I see it as immersion in the true reality. I don’t need to know who the main characters are on social media and what everyone is saying about them, when I can instead spend an hour trying to find a rare sparrow. It’s very clear to me which of those two activities is the more ridiculous. It’s not the one with the sparrow.
— Ed Yong, from “When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place (NY Times, March 30, 2024)
Photo: DK @ Cove Island Park, March 31, 2024. Canada Geese at sunrise. More photos from that morning here.