The Roadrunner

Bosque del Apache Wildlife refuge, New Mexico, February 2012.

The Roadrunner

We sit in the car quiet as mice watching the ducks in the ponds. It is a cold early morning.While we watch a chilly roadrunner comes out of the long grass and sits near the road, watching us. I have never seen a quiet roadrunner. Usually they are speeding here and there on long legs, almost a blur, always in a hurry. This one watches us watch him and seems curious and unafraid. Here are some close photos of this interesting bird.



Summer Sounds at Head Harbour Lightstation





High tide, high summer at the Lightstation,

Two AM, Sitting on the stoop. Warm. Dark-Very dark.

A mosquito whines.

Staring unseeing into the sleek intensely black water - listening – listening.

Listen! Long, haunting, passionate wails from the seal’s seaweed ledges-

Intensity tempered by distance.The Night Life of the Bay.

 Little harbor porpoise slipping up and down the passage in the dark.

Hundreds of them, puff, puff, puff-puff.  Busy all around.  Puff, puff -puff.

Distant sound of a whale blowing.  Listen! A geyser of sound.

I wait, hardly breathing, for more.

The bay sips at my feet. The porpoise puff– puff by. A single seabird sings softly in its sleep..

A rattling, explosive vapor roar- I jump. A whale very near!

I can’t see in this darkness. I can’t see,

Another whale blows, close. A Cacophony. Bouncing off the islands.,

reverberating, diminishing- gone.

Silence.

Small sounds. Puff-puff.

The bay laps, murmurs, sings.The tide sighs, sympathetic.

Seaweed simmers, little carbonated pips.

The slim, high calls of seabirds sleeping on the sea.

The dark sea opens almost at my feet!

Roiling, boiling away from a huge rising shape-

A looming dark shape, more felt and heard than seen, softly exploring

the island’s boundary rocks in the dark.

So close, So very close- A feeling of immensity, immediacy,

A powerful Presence.

Terrified to move, fascinated,

I freeze-- listen-- wait--

The Shape  --rests --pauses---listens---

Moves softly with the water----slides,subsides,

and disappears.

                                                               Joyce Morrell

Turn the volume way up. You can hear the seals and the whales on this video taken in the dark at the lightstation.

On this video you can hear pretty clear porpoise puffs as they go by on their way to and from the deeper Bay of Fundy outside the channel. Also a splash-  maybe a seal sliding into the water or a porpoise jumping.

The Lightkeeper's Song

We are members of Friends of Head Harbour Lightstation. We walk over and back from the light almost all year. As we do this we think of the lightkeepers of the past and how they managed to work and live at the lighthouse.

This is a wonderful Nancy Neilson poem. It fits our situation so well- I added photos. I like to call it "The Lightkeepers Song.", but the real title is " High Tide, New Moon" .


High Tide, New Moon     by    Nancy Neilson    

Home lies on the far side
of the whale songs, on the far shore
of the Labrador waters.

This is the road home,

but this is the sea:

we are on the far shore

of the land of bed and teakettle,

and our feet are washed by the herring

of the one sea.

We must wait here and home is on the far side.

Down the road that sways with the stroke of great flippers
across the mewing of seals



We must wait, and when we do go, at last,
through the waters,
we know that our home is an island, part of the one sea:

That we are washed by the blood of seals.
That the great whales sway with our passing,
and the moon.




When we are home, the door swings inward
on bed, and teakettle

and outward to the one sea.

                                                                                                                                                              photo by Danielle Dion


http://www.flickr.com/photos/headharbourlight/3871922677/     watch the whales