The World through a Lens

In 2010 I traveled to England for a two week visit with friends.  Joy and Cliff Young indulged my passions for travel, birding, photography and then later blogging about it all.  Cliff is also a landscape photographer.  They made amazing arrangements to visit a variety of spectacular places - one of which was coastal Wales.  We stayed at a hotel on a golf course with views of a spectacular bay from my room window.  To this day I think of this hotel stay as possibly the nicest I have ever experienced.

Dawn view from my hotel window with the putting green in the foreground

While in Wales the plan was to visit Skomer Island for close-up views and photos of nesting Altlanic puffins.  We all piled aboard a boat carrying perhaps 20-30 other passengers for our Skomer visit.  The cool sunny morning and the bright blue sea were amazing.  When we got to the island the seas were too rough to make the landing at the rocky docking area and we had to turn back.  Everyone on the boat was crestfallen, even though we had all been forewarned that this was a possibility.  I recall sitting across from a man with his approximately 7-8 year old daughter who had awakened at 4:00 am to make the boat launch.  This is what I wrote in my 07/10/2010 blog post: 

"Because we wanted to get a good seat on the boat, we ended our rambling and walked to the boat launch to stand in line with a dad and his seven or eight year old daughter.  I gave my typical greeting, "Hi, how are you?" to which he replied, "Okay, I guess." He explained that he and his daughter had left their home in north Wales at 4:00 am to be assured a place on the boat for the Skomer Island landing.  It was right then that I perked out of my funk at not being able to land on the island. Everyone here today was just as disappointed as I was. What was I thinking?  Later, on the crowded boat, the little girl fell asleep resting against her father and with the hood of her pink jacket shielding her eyes from the bright sun.  At the time I didn't think of it, but now I wish I had got a photo."   

When I re-read the paragraph above from this day I realize how much my photos and writing have changed from 2010 to now.  Now I would never have missed a photo of that child with her father.  

As a consolation, it turned out that even the boat ride to and from Skomer Island was spectacular, and when we returned to the mainland we spent the day birding along the coastline.  As you can see below in my copied blog posts - also spectacular.

Another consolation prize was to visit Ramsey Island the next day. Both islands are included in the 10/12/2020 NYT article below.

A Glance at Daily Life Among the Caretakers of Britain's Small Islands

My blog entry from 07/10/2010:  Skomer Island

And from 07/12/2010:  Ramsey Island

Male/female Rose-breasted Grosbeak

From National Geographic:  Male/female Rose-breasted Grosbeak 

An Essay from Helen MacDonald

The Mysterious Life of Birds Who Never Come Down

by Helen MacDonald, New York Times, 07/29/20

Two NYT articles from May, 2020 to save

How Animal Observations Can Free Us From Ourselves by Helen McDonald

7 Tips for Watching Birds in Spring During Lockdown by David Allen Sibley

Final photos and final blog post

On September 30th, 2008, I began writing Into the Woods and Elsewhere with an inviting and cleverly titled post, "Starting a blog ..." From this inauspicious start and over the course of nearly 12 years I entered 481 posts, this current post being #482.  Several friends and respected birders had started blogs and it seemed like a fun project.  I asked one friend why she had started her blog and she responded, "to improve my writing."  To me she was already a good writer.  Another friend was an accomplished bird photographer and I admired the way he posted his photos in context with his birding outings.

I, too, enjoyed writing and knew I needed a lot of improvement, and I loved birding.  As for taking photos, I was a true novice and would mostly forget to take along a camera.  This was a failing which I came to regret.   In early April, 2005, while scouting at Tawas State Park for an upcoming trip with Maryland friends, I came across what would have been the lower peninsula's first documented Smith's Longspur. The female bird was often no more than five feet away from me.  Did I have a camera?  No. Was my Smith's Longspur sighting accepted by the Michigan Bird Records Committee?  No.  That experience hustled me to improve my computer and digital camera skills and after that I came to think of both binoculars and camera as essential tools.  My blog was the next step.

My first posts were clumsy, but the whole thing was fun and the learning was great, both with computer and camera. Over the years my posts became more involved as I documented all kinds of birding trips; local, statewide, across states and international trips.  Over time I became more and more interested in a wider variety of wildlife; butterflies, wildflowers, dragonflies, mammals, habitat, scenery ... I was seeing the bigger picture and I wanted to photograph it and write about it.  

Just over 14 years ago I began a job that has since come to take over my life.  For the past five years I have worked essentially 60 hours per week.  In these years the work has required increasing levels of OCD which I had previously reserved for birding and the observational skills birding requires.  Outings for birding and other wildlife became fewer and more precious.  I still managed one big trip each year and, upon returning, obsessively blogged about it using all of my best, and not so best, photos.  Still work went on and birding became less.  

Now having returned from India just over two months ago, it seems a good time to stop this blog.  Just under 12 years is long enough.  Google has changed their blogger format and it is not the relatively clean and easy process that it had been for years.  I can only enter photos when I am in Google Chrome and I'm not a Google Chrome user.  Working 60 hours per week and the current COVID-19 pandemic leaves me no time, or desire, to figure out the new format.  It does make me sad that I won't complete my India trip blog; so much seen, so much to write about and all left undocumented.

I thought about deleting this blog and starting another that would be differently formatted.  But for now, there's just too much here that gives me great memories that I am not ready to part with - 481 posts that I worked hard on.  I still go back to re-read old posts and to look at some of my favorite photos.  And, even when I have not added a post in a month or two or three, I still get between 30-50 hits each month.  "Gray squirrel with white ear tufts" from several years ago remains popular.  Go figure.

My writing is clear, but stylistically my voice and delivery have remained largely unchanged.  When I read over some of my old stuff, it seems quite stilted.  My photos have improved but by becoming a photographer my birding skills have declined.  Tradeoffs.  

In about 9 months I plan to retire.  In the interim, I will be thinking of different ways to share photos and document trips.  Flickr and eBird may be two avenues for this.  A different blogging site may be tempting. When I was able to do it well and in a timely manner, blogging was an enjoyable hobby.

I leave with three photos - "best bird of the trip" - of Green-billed Malkoha taken in Kazaringa National Park in Assam.  I was in the lead vehicle with the our field guide when he became very excited, "green-billed malkoha, green-billed malkoha!"  Another member of our group had asked to see this bird.  You know how it sounds when a bird gets called out with that pitch in your guide's voice.  Super exciting and I got these nice photos.      

Green-billed Malkoha (Rhopodytes tristis)

From Princeton Field Guide, Birds of India: Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, 2nd edition, by Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp and Tim Inskipp, 2011, page 210.

Resident. Himalayas, NE and E. India and Bangladesh.  ID Large and very long-tailed.  Grayish-green in coloration with lime-green bill, red-eye patch, white-streaked supercilium and broad white tips to tail feathers.  VOICE  Gives a low croaking ko... ko... ko and a chuckle when flushed.  HH Rather shy; usually keeps out of sight.  Creeps and clambers unobtrusively through branches low down in thick vegetation. Dense broad-leafed forest and thickets.  Globally threatened.  TN Formerly placed in Phaencophaeus.

By the way, good field guide!   अब के लिए अलविदा