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Year: 2009

Other Places to Go

September 29, 2009 • • 2 Comments

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but blogging has taken a backseat, so at long last, some links to cool sites I’ve discovered of late…

Stop #1.

For months, I’ve been meaning to write about fellow Austinite Lavanna Martin who has one of the most interesting blogs I’ve seen in quite some time. She paints people in coffee shops, often without their knowledge, and posts them on her site: I Stare at People. Lately she’s been painting people in her studio as well. I love the coffee shop portraits as they capture these quick moments so nicely. Her portrayals of her subjects’ faces are especially interesting as they seem to contain the beginnings of stories we’ll never really know.

Stop #2.

Last spring, the online literary site qarrtsiluni announced a chapbook contest. The winner, A Walk Through the Memory Palace by Pamela Johnson Parker can be read online or ordered from qarrtsiluni‘s bookstore. I haven’t read it yet as I’m eagerly awaiting my print copy.

Stop #3.

Visit Lucy over at Box Elder. I can’t recall how I found my way there, but I’m glad I did. Beautiful photography and thoughtful writing from France (but written in English which is how I can say honestly say Lucy’s writing is fantastic).

Stop #4.

George at I’m Not One to Blog, But… is calling it quits, at least for now. Go on over and say so long to George and the boys (greyhounds Nigel and Mookie) and thank them for making it a better blogosphere.

Stop # 5.

In all honesty, I don’t really have a 5th stop. It’s important that I be upfront and honest about that because almost a month ago Fred at Ironicus Maximus gave me the Honest Blogger Award.

If there was an academy, I’d thank it.

I’m supposed to list 7 other honest bloggers, but I’m not going to do that. The sites I’ve listed above would certainly qualify as would nearly all of the sites on my links page.

Birding the Pond Trail, First Week of Autumn

September 28, 2009 • • 2 Comments

Last week, the first day of autumn brought a cold front and rain so it actually felt like fall for a few days. I took a walk down the trail that runs through our neighborhood and was surprised to see that some of the winter residents had started to come back. I didn’t bring my camera since it was raining so no pictures.

I wasn’t expecting to see anything more than the grackles, vultures, jays and doves that I’ve been seeing all summer on these weekly counts down the trail so I was happily surprised by the tapping of woodpeckers. Ladder-backs and Red-bellies are fairly common in the neighborhood during fall and winter, but other than a Downy I saw back in July I hadn’t seen one or heard a woodpecker since early April, but I saw at least 2 Ladder-backs and I think I heard a few more farther down. Welcome back, woodpeckers.

As I approached the pond, I saw one of the Red-shouldered Hawks swoop out over the trail. He had some unfortunate something in his talons. Based on size and color, I suspect it was a dove. I saw him again a little farther along. This time he was sitting in a branch about 30 feet off the trail. He stuck around long enough for me to get a quick look and wish I’d brought the camera since it had stopped raining. This hawk has been teasing me all year and one of these days, I’m going to get a decent picture.

When I got to the pond, I was surprised to see a few ducks. I counted 3 Blue-winged Teal in the reeds on the far side. A few days later, I spotted 6 of them, so the ducks are starting to filter back in from points north. I also spotted 3 Pied-billed Grebes swimming in tight formation a little closer to my side of the pond. I can’t help but wonder if these are the same 3 that spent last winter here. These are the first grebes on the pond since May and the first ducks since early April. Welcome back, waterfowl.

For those who may have forgotten (or for any newcomers), I started a so-called Big Year (really more of a committed small year) back in January to see what birds I could see along the trail within a mile of my house. Here’s the updated list as of last week, the first week of fall:

  1. Black-bellied Whistling Duck
  2. Gadwall
  3. American Wigeon
  4. Blue-winged Teal
  5. Northern Shoveler
  6. Northern Pintail
  7. Ring-necked Duck
  8. Pied-billed Grebe
  9. Great Blue Heron
  10. Great Egret
  11. Little Blue Heron
  12. Green Heron
  13. Yellow-crowned Night Heron
  14. Black Vulture
  15. Turkey Vulture
  16. Osprey
  17. Red-shouldered Hawk
  18. Killdeer
  19. White-winged Dove
  20. Mourning Dove
  21. Black-chinned Hummingbird
  22. Red-bellied Woodpecker
  23. Ladder-backed Woodpecker
  24. Downy Woodpecker
  25. Eastern Phoebe
  26. Ash-throated Flycatcher
  27. Western Kingbird
  28. Scissor-tailed Flycathcer
  29. Blue Jay
  30. American Crow
  31. Purple Martin
  32. Barn Swallow
  33. Carolina Chickadee
  34. Black-crested Titmouse
  35. Carolina Wren
  36. Bewick’s Wren
  37. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
  38. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
  39. Eastern Bluebird
  40. American Robin
  41. Northern Mockingbird
  42. European Starling
  43. Orange-crowned Warbler
  44. Yellow-rumped Warbler
  45. Black-and-white Warbler
  46. Common Yellowthroat
  47. Chipping Sparrow
  48. Song Sparrow
  49. Northern Cardinal
  50. Red-winged Blackbird
  51. Common Grackle
  52. Great-tailed Grackle
  53. House Finch
  54. Lesser Goldfinch
  55. American Goldfinch
  56. House Sparrow

The Crow’s Lesson

September 17, 2009 • • 16 Comments

A multitude of hungry words, scribbled on a scrap of paper, begs for just the merest pittance of the greater meaning bestowed by syntax. I stare and hear their cries, but next to hip, husk just looks like flask, for crying out loud. Besides, it’s clearly an empty one at that. The cat suggests that swilling single-malt could be the remedy of meaning that might make these words conform and stand in ordered lines.  Then he knocks a bottle off the bar, which is irksome, but not critical. I mean, what good is a cat’s advice on writing anyway? Sure, they’re decent spellers—everyone knows that—but for paragraphs, they don’t have much to offer. He looks at me with something like pity in his green eyes and asks if I’d like to help him lick up a puddle of Oban 14. I shake my head—not now, I’m working. I clean the broken glass and wrestle those words, but like scofflaw dreams on fitful nights where sleep, forgetting its starring role in the late show of my mind, lurks beyond the limelight in the shadows by the curtains, the words just lie there, scattered on paper, plum forgotten and ignored much like the clover extending across the lawn, dotted as it is with the wrappers of some confectioner’s dreams, reduced now to just the faintest sparkle, piquing only the interest of the passing crows who pluck them off the ground,  take them back to their nests and read the lists of ingredients to their children warning them away from words they don’t understand and can’t pronounce.

—

This is the result of staring at the word list from Read Write Prompt #92: Word Gems. I think I used them all. Go here to see what others made of the same list.

Scenes from a Short Hike along the Neighborhood Trail

September 8, 2009 • • 12 Comments

The other day, I took a short walk down the neighborhood trail, pointing the camera down more than up. It was a gray and humid day that suggested rain but none ever really fell in our neighborhood. Even if it had, the drought would still be way ahead.

The pond trail bridge

I really like this little bridge that connects two neighborhoods with the main trail. I’ve gotten a few nice shots looking downstream from it and sometimes I even see a few snakes hanging out nearby.

Wildflowers

I probably should learn to ID some of the wildflowers around here. Until I do, though, they’re just going to have to be pretty white flowers. Whatever they are, they jumped out of the surrounding dry green like sparks.

Log on the Trails

There used to be a really nice log like this farther down the trail, but it’s gone now. Probably in someone’s house or on their porch. I hope this one goes unnoticed a little longer.

Prickly Pear

As dry as it’s been, you’d think the cacti would be loving it, but the prickly pears are suffering as much as everyone else. I saw more dried up and dead ones than usual.

Purple Wildflowers

A further reminder to learn the names of some flowers.

Prickly Pear Fruit

Tagged Tree

Somewhere in the archives of the City of Austin, there is probably a notation that could point some bureaucrat straight to this tree. I think the trees with numbers are the good ones.

Bone

I keep seeing this single bone in a clearing and finally took a picture of it. A mile farther down, I found a deer skeleton last spring. I wonder if this is part of the same.

Turkey Vulture

There weren’t many birds out other than the Turkey Vultures, which I enjoy watching as they sail overhead.

Gasoline, Meet Match

August 19, 2009 • • 29 Comments

The bustling elocution of
the eight-track saints

rattles nerves like diodes
hitched to an electric chair

Rancid impulses coagulate
around anger, another rant
blares from the radio

Car racing homeward
lizards skulking among
dead armadillos on the shoulder

One last chance for a course change
flinging into the driveway

desperate to say, I understand,
forgetting reason frothed to static

going instead for the gun

—

This is for the latest wordle prompt at Read Write Poem (#88). I like these word list prompts because I generally approach the writing with no preconceived notions of what the poem is going to be about. I just let the list of words play and try to see where they land. This one kind of surprised me.

Snakes on a Blog

August 17, 2009 • • 2 Comments

Blotched Water Snakes

Lately, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the other life that lives along the little stream that runs to the pond down the street. Summer birding in these parts can be a bit dull and besides, there is a whole ecosystem out there to enjoy and appreciate.

From the footbridge over the stream, I’ve been noticing these little snakes that like to sit in the water, likely waiting for minnows to swim by. I’ve seen as many as three at a time going in and out of the crevices in the rocks. A jogger stopped on the bridge to have a look and he told me he saw four of them a few days prior.

As a kid living in the Philippines, I learned never to mess with snakes, and I still don’t even though I know the poisonous Texas snakes and these aren’t them. According to Austin Reptile Service’s ID Page for blotched snakes, I’m pretty certain these are Blotched Water Snakes (nerodia erythrogaster transversa), a nonvenomous species. The one with the more pronounced pattern is a juvenile.

Despite the fact that they’re nonvenomous, I kept my distance and certainly wouldn’t pick one up and not just because I don’t think people should go around handling wild animals but because, well, those Philippine lessons die hard and it could be a cobra or a bamboo viper. Aren’t irrationalities fascinating?

Still, I enjoyed watching them cool in the water and on that 100+ degree morning, I wouldn’t have minded joining them.

Blotched Water Snake

Summoning

July 30, 2009 • • 7 Comments

We hadn’t been walking long when I stumbled over ivy-covered stones. I bent to have a look. Found names and dates from the eighteenth century. Other stones, each with familiar names from the island’s past and dates long gone, lay scattered and toppled, poking up through centuries of leaf litter, soft soil and faded old beer cans.

We learned the difference between
boneyards and gardens of eternal rest
in the hours before the sun went down

Where faces fluoresce in ultraviolet light
stories             leapt                from stone

two broad-winged hawks
circle overhead and a little
girl calls for help, her voice
coming from, disappearing into
slow-moving creek water

An incandescent spark
between two wires reveals

dead snake
spiders under a bridge
raccoon scrambling away
water               full of memory

screams

submerged
washed away
generations ago

resurface

You knew this would happen,
my inscrutable friend.

You knew.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s Prompt #85: Spooky, which asks participants to respond to a picture of two guys in a graveyard. It’s a cool image and you can see it at the RWP site.

Three Poems about Vultures & Grackles

July 25, 2009 • • 9 Comments

Two of my poems and a short prose piece were published yesterday over at Thirteen Myna Birds: “God Hates Grackles,” “Lines Discovered in an Aging Ornithologist’s Field Journal,” and “Circling Vultures.”  They are part of a series I’ve been working on about vultures and grackles called Birds Nobody Loves.

Poems don’t stay around long at Thirteen Myna Birds so check them out before they fly off into the ether. Be sure to look around and check out the other pieces in the current flight formation while you’re there as well.

In case you missed it, another poem from this series was published at Bolts of Silk last month (“My Tourist Yard“) and another, “Good Authority,” will appear there later this year.