Flamingo Friday: A Reflection on Light and Water

Is it an oil painting, an early Monet of flowers in a field or his first attempt at waterlilies?

Is it the image of creatures high above the rippling surface, unaware of the colors they leak like ink into the water?

Or is it the image of something below that surface, shapes rising waveringly out of the depths, from worlds unfathomable, that will someday, as they break through the skin of the pool, come clear?

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Please Don't Like This Blog

Of course you should like this blog, and get all of your friends and acquaintances to like it, and make me famous and, eventually, rich. But please don’t “like” it.

I am so unutterably tired of being exhorted by everything, including human-rights groups and clothing stores, to “like” them on Facebook, thus demonstrating to the world that I am one of 100 people who visited their site and clicked on a blue icon with an “f” in it.

Because—let’s be very clear here—that’s all it shows. It doesn’t—it can’t—indicate any sort of special feeling, any passionate bond of empathy. And if you don’t “like” something, that doesn’t stop, or prevent, you from liking it—in the ever-so-retro way of actually having an appreciation for it—which you don’t need to advertise in order for it to be true.

It seems to me that people like my blog when they visit it regularly and/or post comments, and that people like me when they demonstrate their fondness for me through their everyday actions. But a stupid blue button is neither an adequate substitute for nor a necessary embellishment of those real gestures and emotions.

I realize this entry is uncharacteristically un-zoological in nature. But this is something that’s been rankling in me for some time now, and I just had to get it out—you know, in words and phrases, the way our ancestors did before the invention of online social media. (Although, I have to say, if there were a “dislike” button available…)

So thanks for reading, and feel free to like or dislike this post. No technology necessary.

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A Melancholy Mongoose for Monday

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Wild Wildlife: A Piping Plover Eludes Me

This was taken at the National Seashore on Cape Cod, where a number of areas of beach near the dunes are roped off for “seabird use.” Piping plovers and terns were nesting there, and the little ploverettes, which look like cotton balls on stilts, were racing about at top speed. Unfortunately, their parents were pretty fast on their feet as well, so my best images of them are as they’re running away. Just another example of how animals don’t pose...

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Flamingo Friday: Ghost Flamingos

Sometimes a slow shutter speed has its advantages.

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Another Caption Challenge

There are some photos that seem to cry out for a caption, be it dialogue, monologue, or narration. That’s where all of you come in.

I’m perfectly happy to blather on ad nauseam about animal behaviors (human and non-) and exciting wildlife sightings, but it would defeat the whole purpose of a blog if the entries weren’t occasionally interactive. Not that I don’t appreciate your comments on a day-to-day basis, but I don’t always take enough advantage of them. So from now on, every week or so I’ll post an image that seems particularly evocative, provocative, or absurd, and hope that you’ll make the post and the photo even better by aptly captioning it.

So, ladies, gentlemen, and all others, please have at it.

Challenge # 1:

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A Mollusk Mitzvah

For over a year now—pretty much since we’ve moved here—I’ve been asking, “Where are the snails of DC?”

This has been, by default, a rhetorical question, since the only person I ask regularly (sorry, Annie) doesn’t know. It doesn’t stop me from wondering, though. In Boston, after every rain the land snails would be out in droves, crawling along the elevated stone walls of front gardens, waggling their eye stalks in the shadow of leaves, gliding with infinite patience along the stems of roses.

Here in DC, the land snails are conspicuous by their absence. Occasionally I’ll be taunted by the sight of a dried, glittering trail of mucus on the pavement, a tantalizing trace of some gastropod’s passage—but never a glimpse of the creature itself.

[an elusive--but still visible--Boston snail]

Until a couple of weeks ago, when, walking home from the farmers’ market, I saw it: a beautiful leopard-spotted slug lying on the sidewalk.

It was not a damp day, and the slug wasn’t moving, so I feared the worst. But when I touched it lightly with a leaf, it twitched, and my heart leapt up. I gently nudged it onto the leaf and carried it to the raised curb bordering a yard. I couldn’t resist talking some pictures of it as it recovered from its trauma and began to stretch itself and extend its eye stalks curiously. Soon enough, though, I realized that, while it was now safe from foot traffic, it wasn’t protected from the sun, so I tucked it under the shade of a yew bush and went on my way.

The whole encounter—my first slug spotting in DC and the opportunity to rescue a pulmonate in distress—left me with a warm glow that lasted all day. I guess it’s true that virtue is its own reward.

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This Post Is…

When my sister was little and learning English, she didn’t always grasp the entirety of metaphors. So, upon observing a messy space, she would announce, “This room is a pig!”

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Flamingo Friday: Why Can’t We Just Have Bugs Like All the Other Kids?

There’s something about flamingos that makes them do everything differently, from their mating rituals to their not-quite-beak-fights to their bizarre baleen-esque eating—and this weirdness extends to how they feed their young as well. Mind you, I’m not saying that regurgitating fish or insects into an infant’s mouth isn’t a bit off-putting in and of itself, but at least it’s typical. (Among birds, that is. I don’t know how you were raised, but I meant “among birds.”)

But, no: flamingos feed their young crop milk, a strange substance secreted by male and female adults and fed—or sort of dripped—to these one- or two-month-old youngsters beak-to-beak, as in the photo above. The flamingelehs look pretty excited about it, but I can’t help but wonder if, watching the young of other wild birds around them, they don’t start asking their parents some tough questions about why they can’t be like the other kids. (“And if all the other hatchlings jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”)

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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Taste as Sweet

Over Fourth of July weekend I was in closer proximity to a garden than I usually get to be in my apartment-dwelling existence; I admired the many flowers blooming within it, including a number of roses, and, as I investigated the roses more closely, I also admired the enormous number of insects inhabiting (or at least visiting) those roses.

I’m not very good with terrestrial insects, being neither an entomologist nor a gardener (see “apartment-dwelling”), so some of these animals may have been harmless pollinators—rather more exotic than the easily identified bumble- and honey bees plunging themselves greedily into the cups of petals, but still not malign.

[look at that cute, innocent face!]

Others, though, were more obviously predatory, however amusing and charismatic I found their elongated insect faces to be:

I don’t know if there was something especially tantalizing about these roses, or if the poor things were just in a place that was chock-full of ravenous insects—or if this is the normal number of creatures one generally sees lounging in blossoms—but the number and diversity of arthropod life very much impressed me. The only trouble was getting the wary little things to stay still long enough for me to snap their picture.

["I just remembered I have to go
pick up my car at the repair shop..."]

That probably wasn’t the only trouble for the roses, but in my defense, in spite of the hordes descending on them, the bushes were overall quite healthy and flourishing—and so I didn’t feel too guilty about just documenting their insect intruders rather than trying to get rid of them. And, since I hadn’t ID’ed them, I didn’t want to unknowingly injure a pollinator or even a (I love this term) nectar robber.

Better safe than sorry, right? (I just hope the roses felt the same.)

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One Good Shot: Greater Rhea Chick Contemplates the Fleeting Nature of Time and Birdseed

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They Fiddle While We (Sun)Burn

I love the ocean, and its inhabitants, more than is probably good for me—or for those around me, who often have to suffer through my disquisitions on the subjects. But last weekend, at least, it was just as well that I had such an excessive fondness for all things marine.

Last Saturday, when Annie and I were on Cape Cod, we took a long (3-miles each way) walk on a trail that led through salt-marshes, alongside sand dunes, and finally to a beach on Cape Cod Bay. This would have been lovely (and in many ways still was) if it hadn’t meant that we had to walk most of six miles on shifting sand in the full heat of the sun—on one of those miraculous Cape-Cod summer days where there’s not a cloud in the sky. (Did I mention that I didn’t have a hat?)

This could have been a Very Bad Vacation Experience, in spite of the beauty of the dunes and water and the gorgeous liquid music of the song sparrows—if it wasn’t for my inordinate enthusiasm for marine life.

[a very cool non-marine sighting:
look at how this grashopper (locust?)
blends in perfectly with the sand]

Because, you see, as we trudged through the buggy, exposed marsh, we saw the most amazing thing. –At first, as we began our walk, I noticed only a shadowy scurrying in the seagrass litter by our feet. I followed the motion and discovered a small crab (less than an inch long), which quickly disappeared into a burrow in the damp sand.

We soon discovered that the marshes were full of fiddler crabs (Uca pugnax), all scuttling among their burrows or wading into puddles of brackish water or waving their claws with great pomp.

[Notice how huge its left claw is compared
to its eentsy-weentsy right-hand one;
do fiddler crabs have Pincer Envy?]

This was thrilling for me, since I’ve seen the openings of their burrows many times—little holes in damp sand, surrounded by small balls of sand made by their excavations—but had never before seen the actual crabs, much less such a swarm of them. (This is their breeding season, and, as this excellent article on their ecology and behavior describes, the males gather in leks—big groups of show-offs—to compete for mates and see whose large claw is the biggest.)

Annie thought they were pretty cool, too. So, thanks to the distraction of a novel marsh-side sighting, we were able to enjoy what the walk did offer us and—mostly—dismiss what it didn’t (like restrooms or more than ten minutes of shade).

Thus I illustrate the value of an obsession with the sea.

P.S. If you want to know more about fiddler crabs—based on my reading, not much personal experience—please ask me in the comments, and I’ll tell you.

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Flamingo Friday: Return of the Flamingelehs

Last year’s flamingelehs are already more or less adults, a fact that unnerves me as much as does the consistent, inconsiderate growth of younger people of my acquaintance, who insist on becoming taller and older each time that I see them. (Some of them even become taller than I am, which I find quite inappropriate, not to mention unfair. I blame their parents for feeding them too much: after all, what’s a little malnutrition so long as it helps maintain the status quo?) –But I digress.

A couple of months ago I saw the flamingos building their mud nesting platforms:

Later, I would often see them sitting on these elevated mud-nests—though they were careful not to let their brooding interfere with their beaky feuds.

In the intervening months I did spy eggs once or twice, and my heart leapt up with excitement. Then, just at the end of June, I heard a high-pitched twittering peeping, and I knew even before I saw it that there were new flamingelehs:

At the time I only saw this one (plus some unhatched eggs), but I’m hoping that quite soon I’ll be able to report a whole new crop of flamingelehs moseying about on their enormous feet and bridging the visual gap between “awkward and slightly ugly” and “adorable.”

P.S. If you're looking for something to do with your free time, go to the National Wildlife photo contest site, search for photos under my last name (Ambrogio), and, if you like them, vote for them! (You can vote for other people's photos, too, if you want; I'm magnanimous like that.)

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Wild Wildlife: The Score

And in another round of the frog game, we have…

Frogs, 0;

Olivia, 2.

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Waterworks

A couple of months ago, when the lion cubs were smaller, they evinced a fascination in, and fear of, the moat of water surrounding their enclosure. They would watch their parents drink, would even drink themselves—but there always seemed to be an element of uncertainty or discomfort involved.

One day, one of their mothers became captivated by the desire to play with (or at least acquire) a big, hollow-plastic ball; unfortunately, this ball was floating tauntingly in the moat, at a distance that—she discovered after much effort—was just out of reach.

If I was entertained by this demonstration of grimly determined frivolity on the part of the lioness, you can imagine how much more surprised and interested her offspring were in her behavior.

They alternated between watching her efforts with great interest…

And watching the water with great suspicion.

Eventually, the lioness gave up and lay down with the unruffled dignity of a sphinx; looking at her, you’d never know that mere moments ago she had been batting excitedly at the air.

I’m not sure what impression the incident made on the cubs, but I doubt it was a lasting one; their focus soon shifted to other things.

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Flamingo Friday: Animals Don't Pose

Another violent flamingo argument over something both parties had forgotten two minutes later.

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