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 . . .

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Expecting Injured Birds

Spring's storms knock nests out of the trees. Humans bring to Wild Bird Rescue baby birds. Here is a collection of images I took last year of baby birds raised and then released by Wild Bird Rescue.

Chimney Swifts.


Kingbirds.


Mockingbird (at left) and Robin (at right).


A baby dove? 


Hawk, but which one? 


Inca Dove.


Nightjar.


Pied-billed Grebe.


American Robin.


Empidonax Flycatcher. Behind him, blurred by the boque, is a Scissortail Flycatcher.


Wild Bird Rescue and BirdManBob save adult birds, too, such as the Red-tailed Hawk pictured above. (Image post-processed in the digital darkroom to emphasize colors.)


Fortunately for birds, Missi's Mom is there with BirdManBob to help save wild birds. Missi's Mom holds the same hawk that David Farabee released shortly after I took this picture.



Little Birds Attacking Big Birds

In the until recently forgotten and dusty archives of my computer, I found an interesting sequence of photographs documenting a Mockingbird and a Kingbird attacking a Red-tailed Hawk.

A Mockingbird begins an attack that lasts several minutes. 

Along comes an Eastern Kingbird to relieve the Mockingbird.


Note the Purple Martin arriving to assess the attacks on the hawk.


The Eastern Kingbird seems relentless. Obviously the stratagem of the little birds consists of constant attack, and take turns to accomplish their mission. Exhausted, the Mockingbird strikes out to a nearby tree to rest, leaving the Kingbird to the task. The Purple Martin made a fly-by then returned to headquarters with pertinent information and input for study on future attacking.

I took these images last spring. At the same tree, a Red-tailed Hawk now roosts. I watch her every weekend lying in her nest wondering if she is the same one I photographed last year, or if she is a new generation of hawks. Here she is landing again in a photograph I donated to Wild Bird Rescue's fundraiser in honor of my flight instructor. I titled the photograph "Looking Good While Landing."

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.