Frozen

Yet another morning's walk into the teeth of a chilly wind. Yet another day of skirting rock-hard puddles wearing icy caps. At least it makes for interesting photographs!

Mixed messages

This time of year is always a mixed bag in Cape May. On the one hand, much of yesterday's snow is already gone, and the buds of our Siberian Elm are swelling by the minute. On the other hand, the snowmelt falling from the eaves is freezing as fast as it drips, leaving much of the vegetation below encased in glistening icicles.

False promises

Arg! After the weekend's balmy temperatures, we were dumped unceremoniously back into winter today, with a fresh dusting of snow coating ground and trees by the end of the day.

Intruders

The invaders stand in serried ranks, their plumes waving gaily in the late afternoon breeze.

Like so much of the country, Cape May County is plagued by invasive species, and Phragmites (also known as Common Reed), is one of the worst. It has taken over most of the freshwater and brackish marshes in the county -- and also grows on any roadside, pasture or field edge with even the smallest hint of sogginess. It crowds out all of the native vegetation and makes huge areas of little value to native wildlife. Sadly, it has proved very difficult (and expensive) to get rid of.

Harbinger

I was right. Spring is coming. A little bird told me so. He sat on a Phragmites stem and belted his song out into the golden late afternoon sunshine, challenging everything within hearing distance -- particularly the rival singing from a sumac bush across the road. A few days of warmth, a few extra minutes of daylight and suddenly the birds are stirring. We've begun to see the first few early migrants: a handful of Tree Swallows coursing over the dunes at The Meadows, two Northern Gannets gliding north over the sea, a growing number of Forster's Terns snoozing on the low-tide sandbars at Miami Beach. And the songsters are starting to tune up again. The grating "oralee" of the Red-winged Blackbirds is one of my first hints that the change in seasons is really on its way. Soon, the lovely liquid warble of American Robins singing their dusk songs will convince me spring is finally here.

A male Red-winged Blackbird

Light, camera ...

Yep, it's the lighthouse again. It can be seen from many, many places here at the southern tip of New Jersey, and it's just so darn photogenic! This shot was taken from the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, known to locals as "The Meadows" because that's what it used to be. When I started coming to Cape May (more years ago than I'd like to admit) there were still cows grazing there.

Barking

We have a Silver Maple tree outside our kitchen window. I'd guess it was planted about the same time as the house was built (i.e. more than 80 years ago) and it's definitely beginning to show its age. It's dropping branches -- sometimes quite large branches -- with mildly alarming regularity now, and its canopy shows more and more balding patches among the leafy arms. But the trunk is still thick and strong and covered with a burgeoning blanket of lichens.

Grass

Before I met Mike, I never really appreciated the subtle beauty of the grasses, mostly because I suppose I had never really looked at them. They're particularly enjoyable at this time of year, when there is so little of botanical interest to look at. Surprisingly, there are more than 120 grass species scattered across Cape May County. They range in size from the dainty, fist-high Annual Meadow Grass to dense, towering clumps of bamboo. Many aren't native, and some of them -- like the Weeping Love Grass that's been planted all along the state's various highways -- are terribly invasive.

Switch grass, which has very open flower heads

Virginia Beardgrass, tall and columnar

Another species, which I don't know

Spring?

It felt like spring today for the first time this year. After weeks of buffeting winds and bitter cold, today was calm and mild. The puddles had melted, the snow piles were gone even from the shady spots, and a loud chorus of birdsong greeted me everywhere I went. In wet woods just up the road from the house, skunk cabbages are beginning to poke their leaves above the water. In our meadow hive, the bees are stirring, ferrying their winter dead out of the box and heading off in search of pollen. Buds are swelling, the first green shoots of bulb plants are stretching out of the dirt, and the good clean smell of earth rises like a mist from the ground. Yay! I'm ready for a change of seasons.

The year's first leaf buds on one of the lacecap hydrangeas

Cape May Light

Somehow, the Cape May Light is a bit like a Cape May sunset -- I never tire of taking its picture. Despite how constant it seems, flashing away night after night for more than 150 years, even the lighthouse changes over time. This is the third incarnation of the Cape May Light; the first two were lost to coastal erosion. And a few years ago, when repairing the motor that powers the light's super-bright 1000 watt beam, the technicians somehow changed the direction of the beam's rotation, which is now counterclockwise instead of clockwise. Cape Mayers soon noticed the change!

Ice II (too)

As with so much of the northeast, we're still experiencing a deep freeze here in New Jersey. For much wildlife, finding water at this time of year is a real challenge. Here's the birdbath at Cape May Point's Triangle Garden; nothing drinkable here!

Port Norris

This evening, a trio of us spent a frigid 90 minutes scanning the marshes along the Maurice River as part of Cape May Bird Observatory's annual wintering raptor survey. Fingers went numb in a manner of minutes, and the three of us hopped and jumped and jogged in place and did calisthenics between our timed scans, trying to keep warm. It made me wonder how waterbirds cope; how can they stand having their unfeathered legs and feet in the frozen mud and icy water at this time of year?

North along the Maurice River

Westward across the salt marsh

Snow Geese gathered as dusk approached.

Gray

After yesterday's sunshine, we were back to dull gray overcast today, and things seemed cold and bleak and wintry as a result. 

The main lake at Cox Hall Creek Wildlife Management Area in Villas.

Ring-necked Ducks and Ruddy Ducks snooze at the far end of the lake.

Valentines

Our ongoing frigid temperatures have greatly reduced the numbers of waterfowl overwintering in Cape May; most of them shipped out to points south when the ponds and lakes and bays froze over, and they haven't returned. Many of the birds that stayed have congregated around the marina docks in the back bays, where the movement of those few boats still in the water (and the slightly warmer temperatures from all the surrounding buildings and pavements and so forth) have kept the water open. Though it's probably not ideal for the birds to be so close to us (it's undoubtedly rather stressful to be close to all of us humans), it's wonderful for the birders, especially for those with cameras in hand.

Buffleheads are small sea ducks (the male's the one with the whiter sides and bigger white head patch). Intriguingly, they nest in trees in northern boreal forests -- in old woodpecker holes!

Female Common Goldeneyes. As weird as it is to imagine ducks in trees, this is another tree-nesting species.

A Common Loon in winter plumage -- much more subtly plumed than it will be in a few months.

Another spectacular sunset sky enticed Mike and me down to the beach again this evening. Cape May certainly does seem to have more than its share of glorious sunsets!

On hold

When I first get back from a tour, there's always a readjustment period. After going 100 miles an hour for a week or two or three, after being "on" for so many days in a row, it's nice to just hang out. Put my feet up. Read something other than a field guide. Sit in a comfy chair and do nothing more strenuous than watching the yard birds. Of course, in most cases, I don't have time to vegetate for long: I have too many neglected chores and half-finished projects to be guilt-free while doing nothing. But days like today -- cold and gray and soggy -- make it much easier to put things off for yet another day.

NJ blues

After a week and a half in the steamy tropical rain forest of Guyana, it was a bit of a shock to return to winter today. The trip home was long and fraught, thanks to the reported threat of violence against our flight out of Georgetown; it meant lots of extra security, with bomb-sniffing dogs checking the cargo hold and all of our luggage, double and triple checks of our paperwork, and multiple trips through all the requisite scanners. It also meant that photos were verboten for much of the day, so it wasn't until I collected my car and started to make my way home that I could finally pull out my phone and snap today's shot. New Jersey was cold and still -- blue instead of green -- and the only sound was the constant rush of passing traffic. What a jolting change from yesterday!

One last day in the wilderness

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

Our trip is going to end as it started -- with drenching rains falling and clouds scudding low and fast overhead. It was touch and go for a while as to whether our little plane would even be able to land on the muddy airstrip, but it finally arrived. We hustled ourselves and our bags onboard and climbed out of the steamy savanna before the next shower drew close. Sadly, the heavy weather meant we couldn't even see the spectacular Kaiteur Falls, let along visit. Maybe next year!

Surama's little airstrip -- and yes, it's as short as it looks.

Another day, another river

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

Surama village sprawls across a patch of savanna on the fringe of the vast Iwokrama Forest. This morning, we walked from the village's eco-lodge (one of the oldest in the country) through several miles of tall, dense gallery forest to the Buro-Buro River for a quiet paddle in a big aluminum canoe. En-route, we flushed a Lesser Nighthawk off the edge sandy track we were walking; it exploded off the ground practically under our feet and flashed off to a nearby tree, where it settled on one of the lowest branches (see below). It was only when we finished taking our pictures and started down the road again that we discovered that she'd been sitting on a single, sparsely spotted white egg.

The Buro-Buro is a much smaller river than any of the others we've explored since arriving in Guyana. Narrow and placid, it twists through taller forest, with tree branches stretching down to the water's surface and vines twining overhead. There are traces of much higher waters along the banks -- debris tangled in branches far overhead, the dark shadows of watermarks well up the trunks, the occasional uprooted tree -- but today it was easy going.

Long-nosed Bats clung to the side of a boulder in midstream.

Chattering groups of White-banded Swallows gathered on twigs and deadfall all along the river.

South to Surama

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

A night of heavy rain turned our battered road into a muddy, greasy quagmire today, and we slipped and slithered our way south to Surama village. A handful of vehicles passed us as we birded along the road and one managed to splash an impressively large curtain of brown slime through an open window into one of our trucks. After that, we pedestrians retreated much further off the road whenever anyone approached, I can assure you!

This snoozing Great Potoo was a late afternoon highlight near Surama; it's amazing how effective its plumage and stance are at camouflaging the bird's outline. (The bird's in the middle of the picture, in case you're having trouble finding it.)

This was one of my many little roommates, which spent most of the evening hanging on a wall in the bathroom. I have no idea what species it is.

Forest primeval

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

The Iwokrama Forest is amazingly huge -- nearly a million acres in the green heart of Guyana. From the top of Turtle Mountain, a 984-foot mountain in the park, we gazed out across a sea of treetops which stretched to the horizon. The range of greens was phenomenal: hunter, olive, lime, chartreuse, kelly, emerald, malachite, teal and a thousand other subtle shades, with the pink and yellow splashes of scattered canopy flowers as highlights. Birds called, insects whirred and chirped and squeaked, the breeze whispered through the trees around us, but -- other than the sound of our voices -- there was not a single human-made sound to hear. How many places on earth can you say that about?

On the road (and river) again

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

We spent another day on Guyana's torturously bad "main highway", traversing the length of the Iwokrama Forest Reserve on our way to the Iwokrama River Lodge. It took much of the morning -- and a goodly part of the afternoon -- but we did stop a few times to stretch our legs, take some respite from the interminable painful bumps and see what we could find. We couldn't match the other day's Harpy Eagle, but we did find a few bits and pieces to enjoy.

A male Guianan Streaked-Antwren rummages through the roadside vegetation.

At dusk, we ventured out onto the mighty Essequibo River to look for nightbirds and caimans. The water, though deep, was as flat and still as a mirror, which made for some nice photos.

Highway birding

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

For those of us who live in the busy parts of the world (particularly the crowded northeastern corner of the US), it's hard to imagine standing for long in the middle of a country's main north-south highway without being squashed flat. But here in Guyana, where the "highway" is a twisting, potholed ribbon of mud (on wet days) or iron hard earth (on dry ones), it's possible to wander for hours without seeing a single vehicle.

These butterflies were clustered along the road, slurping some mineral from a damp patch of soil.

Harpy

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

Ask 100 birders which Neotropical bird they'd most like to see, and I'll bet that a substantial number of them would quickly say "Harpy Eagle". This huge bird of prey is almost mythical -- wary, rare and declining, and generally restricted to the most remote parts of remaining pristine rainforest. And yet, sometimes you just get lucky. Today was one of those days. While bouncing along the narrow, muddy, potholed main "highway" between Lethem and Georgetown, we happened across this majestic sight -- an adult Harpy with the bloody remains of a Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth clutched in its talons. For 30 minutes, we watched as it tried to eat while being dive-bombed by a trio of very fired-up Red-throated Caracaras. It ducked, it dived, it panted, it raised its impressive crest feathers, it tried a couple of different perches, and finally it flew off with the coterie of screaming caracaras right behind. And there were high fives all around. What an awesome bird!

A day in the Rupununi

The Rupununi Savanna is a sprawling, 5000-square-mile expanse in the southwestern corner of Guyana. Most of it is grassland, dried and weatherbeaten at this time of year, lush and green (reportedly) during the summer rainy season. Islands of gallery forest dot the flat plains, and there are traces everywhere of wet season watercourses. Cracked mud crunches underfoot when you walk across now-dry ponds, shorebirds and ducks cluster in remnant pools full of water hyacinth, and islands of gallery forest stand green and lush in low spots and depressions all across the landscape. We're in the very northern part of the savanna, so we can see the ringing hills and mountains, hazy in the distance. After a morning wandering across the sere landscape, we spent another afternoon along the Rupununi River, the main waterway (and highway) through much of the savanna.

A pair of Jabiru, huge "man-sized" storks (as a friend always referred to them), stand atop their sizable nest in one of the savanna's wet spots.

A Cocoi Heron along the Rupununi River.

Dusk along a bend in the river.