Unexpected Birding
On Saturday, Marty, Jeff and I lit out from Muddy Hollow (at Point Reyes) along an undulating trail north into overcast, estuary country. Since the Mt. Vision Fire—about five years ago—you won’t find many live, mature trees along the seaward trailing ridges from the Inverness backbone. This is open country of wetland drainage and sandy brush—blued in spring by vast mats of lupine and patches of Douglas iris. Yet, in the hollows, where farm buildings were located prior to the land’s acquisition by the national park, some rings of planted cypress and a couple oaks, glistening with lace lichen (olive in that diffused light), survive. Along the ridges, most blackened trunks of Monterey pines have fallen, but a few trailside snags bear charred, empty cones. These “fire” pines, which only release their seed after a hot blaze, have resulted in thousands of waist-high saplings. The dense forest to come will obscure ridgetop views of the Pacific and of the curving high cliffs of Drake’s Bay, so you might want to see it now.
We passed through a couple cattle stiles in that bucolic country before descending along the watershed of Limantour Estero. Some of the freshets have been artificially dammed, creating large ponds. As we were discussing the War Fever sweeping much of the planet, we were surprised to startle hundreds of scaup—the white-sided black duck—that swept off the water’s surface, instantly reversing a downpour’s effect. Up close their wings seemed to rotate, awkwardly, like so many wind-up toys. Yet, high above the surface, scores of birds pursued various flight plans, in a seeming chaos yet without collisions.
While the collective scaup-effect was overwhelming, we didn’t miss the great blue heron paperclip-fold its neck and lift gangly legs for a shoreward zigzag. The egret maintained its position, a white-tufted Q-Tip near the opposite shore. Several cormorants now swept the surface, with their cinderlike craniums featuring those odd phrenological bumps. But the real treat were the white “penguins”—Marty and Jeff ribbed me for not being able to immediately name the pelicans. About fifty of these large birds were plying the pond waters. After letting the scaup make their statement, the white pelican beat the air for loft, unfolding six-foot wingspreads. Because their wings are end-capped on the undersides with black boomerangs, they once appeared at Tomales Bay (described elsewhere by Michael Jeneid) as a towering abstract spiral right out of M.C. Escher. The air pressure on our ears as the birds rose was immense. After many escaped toward the estero mouth, one pelican flew toward the shore where we were now respectfully seated—its brave sortie almost belied by its whimsical yellow beak. What drew all these birds here on Saturday? Perhaps impending, mild rains off the Pacific, which drenched us—not unhappily—before we beat it the 2.5 miles back to the car.
posted by Paul at 12:14 PM
Delta Aren’t the Only Blues
Here’s a bit I like from John Pareles’s NYT review today of
The North Mississippi Hill Country concert Friday in Brooklyn Heights, featuring Otha Turner, T-Model Ford and Jessie Mae Hemphill, among admirers such as Lucinda Williams:
“Jessie Mae Hemphill, 64, is recovering from a stroke and no longer plays guitar. Instead she steadily tapped a tambourine on her thigh, and Ms. Williams and her band tried to follow along while Ms. Hemphill evaded regular four-bar phrases. Ms. Hemphill praised the Lord, then sang ‘Jump Baby Jump,’ making ‘Do it, baby, do it” into a ghostly, girlish incantation.
“Ms. Williams applied the eerie calm of Mississippi blues to her own ‘Get Right With God’ and two bleak blues songs. Over her band’s skulking guitar lines, her voice was tattered but tenacious as she warned, ‘Hard times will kill you,’ and warily begged a lover to come back.”
[Shades of
Buena Vista Social Club… this concert was filmed by Wim Wenders for a segment of a PBS series,
The Blues, to be aired in 2003.]
posted by Paul at 12:06 PM
