It is really a Great Blue Heron

"On the shore a bat, or possibly an umbrella, disengages itself from the shrubbery, causing those nearby to recollect the miseries of childhood."

from The Object-Lesson
by Edward Gorey

Sunday Canoe Trip Loon Distraction Display or Snoopy Dance?

*July 16 about 7:00 am I saw a young bear swimming across 

the narrow spot in the slough in front of the cabin. It

might be the same one that drinking from the pond in

Rigmor's front yard a couple of days ago. Then on the way

to Shellbrook a sow and three cubs crossed the highway. 

I was unable to get a photo in either case.

"And then I hear

outside, over the actual waves, the small,

perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,

and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out

to the fading moon, to the pink flush

swelling in the east that, soon,

will become the long, reasonable day."

from The Loon

by Mary Oliver

We changed our route to avoid the area the loon

was obviously guarding.

Sunday Canoe Trip, Larger Slough Young Yellow-Headed Blackbird

The lily flowers always seem alien to us.

We loved these shots of the Song Sparrow they 

reminded us of wildlife dioramas. They also show
the small liminal landscape that exists at the edge of
the slough under the shadows of the overhanging
willows.

The birds with young are either secretive or carrying out

distraction displays. With the Yellow-Headed Blackbirds it 

was a bit of both. When we paddled over to the reed bed in 

deep in the slough to see what they were up to we saw several

young clinging to the reeds, so we took a couple shots and 

backed up to avoid disturbing them. There are no cabins on the 

slough and it is both shallow and inaccessable which limits most

motor boats and the disruptive wakes they can produce.

“In general the assumption of all of us, child or adult, was that this was a new country and that a new country had no history. History was something that applied to other places.” 


from Wolf willow
Wallace Stegner

Poorer quality shots but it looks like at least three more chicks 
at various stages of development.

Spring Azure?

"We have not heard the music of the spheres,

The song of star to star, but there are sounds

More deep than human joy and human tears,

That Nature uses in her common rounds"

from Voices of the Earth

by Archibald Lampman

Great Blue Heron on the slough

"Seedpods helicopter down

and sink under the diamond surface

where they become sleek schools of minnow,

moving sharp as a single thought.

Everything that loves to live comes here,

to the edge of water, though it changes

those who gaze or move through it. "

from Mergansers

by Michael redhill

Ouch!!

"The wasp and all his numerous family 

I look upon as a major calamity. 

He throws open his nest with prodigality, 

But I distrust his waspitality. "

Ogden Nash

Road Trip to Spiritwood Last Week (Lunch with Pam)

"Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.

Is is not the Poem that matters.

You can shove the Poem.

What matters is what is out there in the large dark

and in the long light,

Breathing."

from Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear

by Gwendolyn MacEwen