Childhood Memories

January 25, 2023

A friend of mine, Jen Herro, recently posted her first blog, A Carpenter’s Garden, and it struck a chord with me. She is a watercolor artist with a passion for the natural world. Our lives first became entwined when Jen asked if she could use one of the photographs I had posted on The Naturalist’s Notebook Facebook page as a reference piece for one of her paintings. We have never met in person, but through our shared passion for nature and art, it feels as if we’ve been friends forever.

In her introductory post, Jen tells about how her love for the outdoors began in childhood while visiting her grandparents’ cabin in the big north woods of Minnesota. Her grandfather, a naturalist, taught her how to “appreciate the wildness of the land,” how to paddle a canoe, start a campfire and make baked beans in a pot buried in the ground. It sounded like an idyllic childhood, and it made me wonder where my own love for the outdoors had come from.

**Mute Swan Cygnet during a recent snowstorm**

I didn’t have a grandfather who taught me how to canoe or build campfires, but I did have a dad who took me fishing. He was also the person who gently told my mother to “let her be” when I wanted to climb trees, play baseball, and wear blue jeans. Her preference would have been to see me in dresses, playing with dolls, and not running amok through puddles!

**Six year old me worried about holding a fish I recently caught**

My parents did make one grand and loving attempt at giving my brother and I outdoor experiences, though, by taking us camping.

We left home on a hot and humid summer day during the biggest mosquito convention ever, and drove ‘up north’ to find a campsite, pitch a tent, and spend a fun weekend away from home! Mother Nature had other plans. She wanted rain, lots of rain–so much rain that our borrowed tent leaked like a sieve. We were miserable.

**American Robin enjoying berries during our Michigan winter**

I don’t remember going on any nature hikes that weekend, roasting marshmallows, or fishing with my dad, but I do remember slogging through the rain and mud with my nature-weary mother at 2:00 in the morning hoping to find an outhouse! That’s what stayed with me all these years, the rain and the outhouse! It wasn’t the camping experience any of us had hoped for, but it was, nonetheless, memorable!

**Red-breasted Nuthatch at our peanut feeder**

**A sweet white-tailed deer in our backyard**

So, it’s probably safe to say that my love of the outdoors didn’t come from my parents or even my grandparents, at least not in the way that it did for Jen.

What I had was the joy of growing up during the 1950s, when we spent our summer days playing outside with friends, climbing trees, catching bugs, looking for snakes, and exploring the nearby woods. We didn’t have cell phones or iPads to keep us entertained; we barely had a television! What we did have was each other, and the wide-open spaces of our neighborhood, and the nearby parks. The true origins of my interest in Mother Nature remains a mystery, but the freedom I had as a kid to spend all day exploring and interacting with her, kept the love alive.

**Belted Kingfisher during a recent snowfall**

**Black-capped Chickadee in our backyard**

As an adult, I’ve mostly chosen outdoor adventure vacations, rather than leisurely indoor ones. My husband and I have hiked in Scotland, England and Wales, and have backpacked more than a thousand miles on the Appalachian Trail. We’ve also enjoyed a good deal of biking, canoeing, and kayaking along the way. But it wasn’t until I took up photography a few years ago, that the natural world really opened up for me. I found birds I’d never seen before, took close-ups of butterflies I’d only known from a distance, and examined the details of a thousand little dragonflies that only a good camera and a long lens could afford me.

A bird I’d never seen before! (some sort of Mallard Hybrid)

**Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Butterfly Bush (taken last summer)**

It doesn’t really matter where my love of nature ultimately came from, whether it was a father who took me fishing, or a mother who just let me be, I have reaped its benefits my entire life. The countless hours I have spent outdoors have always brought me joy; being able to photograph what I love has been an unexpected bonus!

Collateral Benefits

November 4, 2022

This time of year, when all the beautiful summer flowers have died back, when many of the birds and most of the butterflies have already left for the season, and when my favorite amphibian, the American bullfrog, sits in the muck at the bottom of a pond until spring, I’m often hard-pressed to find things to photograph.

**My favorite amphibian, the American Bullfrog, before hibernating for the winter**

**An Eastern Phoebe and a Common Buckeye**

On a recent picture walk, for example, I trudged around for hours with my heavy camera equipment slung across my shoulders hoping for at least one tiny bird or one late-season dragonfly to land nearby. But all I managed to capture that day was a chipmunk, a fungus, and a fern!! The fungus and the fern were mostly desperation shots (for lack of anything better to shoot), and the chipmunk, well, chipmunks are just cute. I had hoped for so much more!

**Just one of a bazillion adorable chipmunks running around the woods!**

As the world is slowly being drained of color, and the weather vacillates wildly from blissfully pleasant to bitterly disgusting, it takes a lot more motivation, and a whole lot more creative thinking on my part to go for a picture walk. It’s so much harder to find things to photograph! My slow deliberate rambles become even slower as I take more time to investigate whether some nondescript plant has any ‘picture potential’. I ponder the possibilities of a curled-up leaf, or a milkweed pod, as well as a host of other ubiquitous things, like mushrooms, mallards, and geese, to see if something ordinary can look extraordinary—or at least interesting! Usually, if I look hard enough and long enough, I’ll find something!

**Interesting leaf patterns and designs**

**Milkweed Pod bursting forth** **with seeds**

**Apples and Pears at the Kalamazoo Farmers’ Market**

To keep the boredom from setting in, I rotate through a variety of different nature preserves, both near and far. They may have the same birds, and the same dying plants that I have near to home, but the setting is new! I also go out at different times of the day, in different kinds of weather, with one lens or the other, just to mix things up and to keep myself from losing interest.

**A Ruby-crowned Kinglet and a Yellow-rumped Warbler**

Since I started this hobby several years ago, I’ve taken well over 200,000 pictures! I don’t really ‘need’ another mallard, goose, or chipmunk, but I do need all the collateral benefits that come with every walk in the woods, every amble through a field of goldenrod, and every contemplative moment I’ve spent beside a pond watching a bird glide effortlessly along, or a great blue heron stand motionless for hours waiting for lunch to swim by. When I’m out on a picture walk, totally immersed in the task at hand, there’s absolutely no room left in my head for anything else. It’s the perfect antidote to life’s worries.

It’s those collateral benefits that keep me going back for more.

Worth Looking For

January 14, 2021

During these long winter months in Michigan, it isn’t the snow or the cold or the relatively short hours of daylight that make ‘surviving’ winter a challenging endeavor, it’s the endless days of overcast skies. It’s just hard to stay upbeat and pleasant with so many dreary days in a row! When the sun finally does come out, though, everything seems happier, even the birds are smiling!! All seems right with the world… until it isn’t.

A happy looking Female Mallard hybrid on a sunny day at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, January 6, 2021

On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the sun was expected to shine all day. I absolutely couldn’t wait to get outside and take pictures! And even though it was going to be the coldest day ever, I had to get out of the house with my camera to see what I could find.

Adult Trumpeter Swan, Kellogg Bird Sanctuary January 6, 2021

Trumpeter Swan feet (juvenile swan on the left, adult swan on the right)

Juvenile Trumpeter Swan, Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, January 6, 2021

In order to insulate myself against the frigid temperatures, though, I wore three long-sleeved shirts, one fleece jacket, one wind-breaker, one winter coat, two pairs of gloves, one scarf, two hats, and a pair of over-boots to keep my feet from freezing. Inside each pocket of my coat were rechargeable hand-warmers! I was well insulated against the cold, but not well insulated against the breaking news on the radio as I drove home from my blissful day of picture taking.

Cedar Waxwing enjoying juicy red berries on a cold winter day

American Robin enjoying a tasty snack on a winter’s day

The Capitol building of our beloved country was under siege by armed insurgents who were hell bent on overthrowing our election and doing as much damage as possible along the way—smashing windows, breaking down doors, destroying historic property, threatening the lawmakers and beating one Capitol police officer to death. It wasn’t until I got home and turned on the TV that I saw the full extent of the mayhem, hate and carnage that was still taking place.

In the span of just a few short minutes, my peaceful day among the birds had been totally upended and set on fire.

Today, as I look back through the pictures I took on January 6th, I am reminded of all the beauty that still exists in the world. And, I am reminded as well that beauty is not always easy to find or even easy to hang on to once you do find it, but it’s always worth looking for.

Trumpeter Swan, Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, January 6, 2021

Photography as Meditation

December 7, 2020

The idea of photography as meditation has been mulling around in my head for quite some time now. The more I go out to take pictures, the more it feels like a form of meditation.

Dark-eyed Junco– Well into the end of November and the beginning of December, we were getting relatively warm, sunny days that were perfect for all-day photography outings

It was so warm (50 degrees or more) in late November that even the Autumn Meadowhawks were still flitting about and the Painted Turtles were still out sunbathing!

Meditation is commonly described as a “practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.”

Black-capped Chickadee– Four days after the warm, sunny pictures of dragonflies and turtles shown above, it snowed!

Male and Female Cardinal during a brief but spectacular snowfall on November 24th.

Whenever I arrive at a woods, a field or a pond to take pictures, a sense of calm washes over me. I quickly become so focused on looking for interesting things to photograph, that there’s absolutely no room in my brain for any of the usual clutter. Three hours later, I emerge from my ‘trance’, relaxed and ready to face the world. It seems a lot like what I think of as a meditative state.

On another unusually warm November day, I watched the Sandhill Cranes float down to the waiting cornfields

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Sandhill Cranes flock to the open cornfields this time of year. They are a sight (and a sound) to behold!

Much has been written about the therapeutic effects of time spent in nature, but I had never seen anything written about the therapeutic effects of nature photography or, more specifically, ‘photography as meditation’. I decided to do a little research to see if anyone else had come up with the same idea. Surprisingly, there were entire books on the subject!

Female Mallard in the early morning light

Male Mallard and a Female Mallard Hybrid going head to head

Trooper Swan– a cross between a Whooper Swan (pronounced ‘hooper’) and a Trumpeter Swan

“For many people, photography serves as a form of meditation; a way to separate themselves from their stressful lives. Meditation and photography have much in common: both are based in the present moment, both require complete focus, and both are most successful when the mind is free from distracting thoughts.” (Photography as Meditation by Torsten Andreas Hoffman)

Male Mallard conducting an orchestra of Trumpeter Swans at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

Male Mallard with a green head and one with a blue head

Female Mallard, possibly leucistic — Leucism is a partial loss of pigmentation which causes white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticles, but not the eyes.

“Both photography and meditation require an ability to focus steadily on what is happening in order to see more clearly. Whether you are paying mindful attention to the breath as you sit in meditation or whether you are composing an image in a viewfinder, you find yourself hovering before a fleeting, tantalizing reality.” (Stephen Batchelor, Yale University Press, Meditation and Photography)

A well-camouflaged Wilson’s Snipe who was migrating through Michigan

I had tried ‘regular meditation’ once or twice before, where I would sit quietly and calmly for a short period of time and try to focus my attention on only one thing, but I never mastered the art. On a picture walk, though, I can stay focused for hours and there’s absolutely no room in my brain for the worries of the day to intrude— quite a godsend, I’d say, given this horrifying pandemic and the deplorable state of our government.

White-breasted Nuthatch and a Tufted Titmouse

A picture walk continues to be the perfect form of meditation and the perfect antidote to today’s chaos.

Finding Waldo

December 9, 2019

I’ve been traipsing about on and off for the last week or so looking for interesting things to photograph, but it’s not always easy here in Michigan during the winter months. The trees are bare and the sky is often cloudy. Some days it feels like spring, other days it feels like Siberia. Usually I can dress for the weather and still take pictures —unless it’s raining. Like today. I don’t mind getting wet, but my camera sure does!

One of hundreds of Canada Geese at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

Yesterday, by contrast, it was cold and windy– but good enough for a picture walk. My destination: Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. This sanctuary is home to a large number of ducks and swans and geese who like to hang out along the edges of Wintergreen Lake and create a tremendous racket with all their honking and quacking and squabbling.

The whooper swan, also known as the common swan, pronounced hooper swan, is a large northern hemisphere swan.
It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American trumpeter swan,

On any given day at the sanctuary, you can find hundreds of mallards waddling about on the grass or dabbling about in the lake. They are great socializers and mingle freely among the hundreds of Canada Geese and dozens of swans who also call the bird sanctuary home. It was against this backdrop that I played my duck version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’, the game where you have to find a cartoon type character dressed in a red and white striped shirt hidden among hundreds of other characters and objects that look frustratingly similar.

In the duck version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ I was looking for a lone duck, among the hundreds of mallards, that was not like the others, — maybe a Gadwall or a Wigeon or a Wood Duck. An ‘odd duck’ like this is very hard to find among so many mallards. But yesterday, I found my ‘Waldo’—and his wife! (I knew it was his wife because he made an unexpected conjugal visit right in the middle of the lake while I was trying to take a family-friendly, G-rated photo!) The ducks I was looking at were totally new to me and I just kept snapping pictures so I could, hopefully, identify them later.

‘Waldo’s’ conjugal visit in the middle of the lake. That’s Mrs. Waldo underneath his beak!

In spite of all the resources I had available, however, I could not identify these two ducks–not as a particular breed anyway. What I should have realized sooner rather than later, though, was that these two birds were mallard cross breeds.

After reading up on mallards a little bit, I learned that there are many different ducks in the ‘mallard family’ and those ducks are able to breed with one another. The offspring of these unions would then be referred to as a ‘cross breeds” by some or ‘hybrids’ by others.

The bird that we commonly call a ‘mallard’ can mate with domestic ducks as well as Northern Pintails, American Black Ducks, American Wigeons, Northern Shovelers, Cinnamon Teals, Green-winged Teals and Gadwalls.

I still don’t know what mallard mix produced the birds I saw today, but they certainly were an interesting pair!