April 17

Today was full of small delights. I saw my first bumblebee of the year. Not a big deal but still a grin maker nonetheless. The Osprey were fishing in the creek. Instead of diving into the water, one bird was trolling along the surface dragging its claws in the water. It didn’t seem to work but I never saw them do this before. Next up was Flicker love. The male was displaying before his lady love and she just flew off. He has his tail fanned out and was quite impressive. A string of Cormorants flew past and as their formation broke up into a muddle, they simply did a turning rejoin. When groups of planes need to get into a formation, they start turning in big circles. That makes it possible to get behind each other as you can turn inside or outside the leader’s path. I’ve done it myself and was delighted to watch the Cormorants do the same. Some human pilot obviously learned the technique by watching bird formations. A few Barn Swallows joined the Tree Swallows eating bugs over the phragmites. A few Goldfinches were in the bushes by the park gate. Finally a Double Crested Cormorant was in the creek by the bridge. He took off but first to build up speed, it was walking on water for thirty or forty feet. I wish that I could do that too. It was very impressive.

Ciao!

-Jorge

This entry was posted on April 17, 2008 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Daily - the next year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.