"I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I
fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one . . . but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them.
What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! - Think of our life in
nature, - daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it, - rocks, trees, wind on our
cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are
we? where are we?" - Thoreau, ''Ktaadn and the Maine Woods,'' 1848.

View from Mount Wachusett, Massachusetts

". . . there lay Massachusetts, spread out before us, in its length and breadth, like a map."
Thoreau - "A Walk to Wachusett"

Dusk Falls On Wachusett Valley

Sanderling (Juvenile) - Plum Island, Massachusetts

One of the brightest little birds I have ever seen, not in intelligence, but sheer vivacity and motion when it is strutting the edge of the curling foam. I followed this little guy along the surf with maybe ten other birds like it.

More Barred Owl - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

She is getting more gorgeous every day I see her. She comes into the clearing every day at 4:00 like clockwork. This allows me to hone my photography skills which you can track from the beginning of this blog to the last two pictures of Brer Owl.

Dark-Eyed Junco - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

“How often they may be seen thus flitting along in a straggling manner from bush to bush, so that the hedgerow will be all alive with them, each uttering a faint chip from time to time, as if to keep together, bewildering you so that you know not if the greater part are gone by or still to come.”
THOREAU

Osprey - Lincoln, Massachusetts

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote about an osprey fishing over Walden Pond in his classic Walden. The passage reads "...a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish..."

This one was hanging around a few abandoned Great Blue Heron nests doing some active fishing in the pond surrounding the dead tree it was standing upon. It is a great experience to witness these wild birds.

American Goldfinch - Winter Plumage

Here is an adorable little goldfinch hanging out on my feeder. It threw me off with its winter plumage. After consultation with members of MassBird, its little sparrow size makes it definitely of the finch variety.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Common Redpoll - Fitchburg, MA.

"These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead." ---

Thoreau: Journal - January 27, 1860


This little female Redpoll was photographed in Fitchburg, MA. on December 24, 2007. She was feeding on my windowsill and taking brief breaks in a tree to probably consume what she had stored in her mouth. She was actively eating with a group of Blackeyed Juncos.

Great Blue Heron - Plum Island, Massachusetts

"When the heron takes to flight, what a change in size and appearance! ....There go two great undulating wings pinned together, but the body and neck must have been left behind somewhere. " Thoreau

Sept. 6, 2007: This Great Blue Heron was taken at Parker River Wildlife Sanctuary in Plum Island, Massachusetts. It was one of the more successful shots taken by me of a bird on the wing. Its slower wing rate and great body gave me a fighting chance to to capture its majestic swoop across the meadow grasses where it settled into an intertidal pool where a cluster of birders where eyeing a Says Phoebe.

Barred Owl - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

Barred Owl - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

"One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which be preserved a pennisular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day. "

Thoreau - WALDEN
(Chapter XIV Former Inhabitants; and winter visitors)

Mourning Doves - December 20, 2007

So, is it my goal to find something of value through the crux and craw of each brutal yet endearing day? With each moment, I try to absorb something of lasting value, of spirit, of soul, an arresting image benign of its own importance and suggested merely for what it is.

These three doves sleeping together on a tree branch through the tranquility of a December snow squal represents that harmonious intent I, and maybe most of us, strive for. Less than a mile away, there are traffic jams, noise, a ceaseless rush toward commerce and confusion, yet these three are blessedly oblivious, resting in their own comfort, soft and serene in their corner of the wooded world.

"It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots." Thoreau---WALDEN

Barred Owl - Fitchburg, MA. December 16-20, 2007

I initiate this blog with my recent encounters with a Barred Owl. I first saw it from my kitchen window facing the backyard. I saw a flurry of activity in the snow at the base of a tree. I thought, at first, that it was a wounded crow so I went outside to look further. The bird, which I no longer thought was a crow, flew up to alight onto a tree branch. I went over to see what kind of bird it was and to my delight saw that it was a Barred Owl. his owl, over the next few days, responded favorably to calls, both recorded and mimicked by myself. Last night, it came on its own volition. I fear, however, that it may be getting hungrier for the snow is deep and the crust of it is frozen. It's frst attack on a vole or shrew found it stuck in the snow and unable to free itself with an animal in its clutch.

Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden: "I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and underdeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all [men] have."