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Yesterday, I wrote not a word. No fiction. No non-fiction. Nada. Instead, Marianne and I went to Bombay Hook.
Winter birding is a lot more bracing than warm weather birding. Also, there are a lot fewer birds. But the first bird we spotted was a bald eagle, so I have no complaints. We saw great blue herons at regular intervals, which was not surprising, but also a lot albas, which was. Aren't they supposed to be in North Carolina by now?
Highlights of our day include a blue winged teal, buffleheads, a red-headed merganser, and a harrier hawk--on the ground! I've never seen a harrier on the ground before. They are swift daughters of the wind.
Pictured above is Shearness Pond, half covered with iceand glimmering with sunglade.
It was a good day. One worth living.
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5 comments:
Any day spent birding is a day well spent.
What are "albas"?
An alba is an eastern great egret. The great egret(Ardea alba) is also known as the common egret, large egret, or--in the Old World--great white egret or great white heron. So there's a lot of confusion as to name. The alba is one of four subspecies of the great egret. So it's more accurate to use that term than to call it a common egreg as was the most, well, common usage a few decades ago.
Did you stop at Crab 73?
Thank you - I should have realized that was what you were doing, I use the second half of species' Latin binomials to refer to them all the time in my own work.
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