Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Seventeen-million Bats

Every evening after sunset, millions of bats emerge from the Frio Cave.
Cave Swallows share the front part of the cave with the bats. 
           Our friend, Crested Guan, invited us to join Beryl in a tour of the Texas Hill Country. MyMrMallory and I flew to the airport in Leaky, an airport that consists of a nicely-maintained runway, and not much more. We drove to the Frio Cave, Concan, Texas, where Beryl began our tour before an estimated seventeen million Mexican Free-tailed bats began to emerge. So many bats provide food for the hawks nimble enough to catch some of the them while in flight. See more Frio Cave bat flight photographs at Chuck Williamson's site.

 
 

Interestingly, the guano from the bat cave provided gunpowder for use during the Civil War and WWI. 

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Let Lovely Turn of Phrase Begin

JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.